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FIRST LECTURE, 
The Gospel of To-Day, 

(Continued from Yesterday.) 


SECOND LECTURE, 
Ignorance—The Negation of Bliss, 

(Chronic but Curable.) 


THIRD LECTURE, 
The Sex Question, 
(Received and Contents Noted.) 




GOLDEN TEXT. 


Passing Stranger! you do not know how longingly 
I look upon you. 

You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seek¬ 
ing, (it comes to me as of a dream.) 

I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with 
you. 

All is recalled as we flit by each other, fluid, affec¬ 
tionate, chaste, matured. 

You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a 
girl with me. 

I ate with you and slept with you, your body has 
become not yours only nor left my body 
mine only. 

You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, 
as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, 
hands, in return. 

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you 
when I sit alone or wake at night alone. 

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you 
again. 

I am to see to it that I do not lose you. 

Walt Whitman. 


4 


THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

If a tiger should come out of the jungle able to 
think coherently and express himself freely in 
English, without ceasing to be a tiger in every 
respect and aspect, he would be the most popular 
platform speaker in the world. No man, however 
wise and eloquent, no woman, however bright 
and beautiful, would be in his class. And his 
popularity would not rest on mere love of novelty, 
for we would want to understand his thought of 
things and get his point of view. The preacher 
would leave his pulpit, the astronomer his observ¬ 
atory, and the socialist his grocery-box, to hear 
what the apostle from the jungle had to say about 
Life and it problems. 

Well, I never heard a tiger lecture, but I have 
read a book written by one: not a pretty toy tiger, 
such as may still be found in the mountains of 
Bengal, but a genuine old saber-toothed tiger of 
the Pliocene age—an incarnation of strength and 
ferocity who would think it fun to tear up a 
modern elephant, and against whose threatened 
attack the mighty mastodons of his own day 
parked themselves for mutual defense. In some 
forgotten astrial tomb his pristine soul was left 
to slumber for a million years, untempered by 
the process of the suns, untouched by summer’s 
ripening breath, and then it came forth to be a 
man, even as you and I. 


5 


6 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


In daily life we are often reminded that our 
heredity runs back among the beasts of prey. 
Scratch a man deep enough—sometimes a pin 
will do—and we find the tiger, fox, jackal or hog, 
as the case may be. But we never see that past 
in its entirety—a flash of claw or fang, the glare 
of a startled eye, or a smothered growl from lips 
attuned to prayer—is about the limit of our 
social retrospection; and so it was with great 
interest and pleasure that I read what my Plio¬ 
cene brother had to say about modern life and its 
historical development. 

Naturally, he was an individualist of the most 
extreme type. Religion, politics and ethics were 
unknown in his day, and for all such upstart fol- 
de-rol he had supreme contempt. Might was 
Right—the only Right—and weakness the only 
Wrong. Courage was Pliocea for Salvation, and 
cowardice spelt Damnation. Brute force—the 
only force he knew—was the all-sufficient argu¬ 
ment for every occasion. The law of the Jungle 
was perfect, fitting itself to every circumstance. 
Every question settled by fang or club or sword 
or rifled cannon was inevitably settled right, and 
every sham settlement arrived at by any other 
means was the patch-work of degenerates—a 
trick to shirk the struggle for existence and secure 
the survival of the unfit. 

There is no shrinking here from logical con¬ 
clusions. Life and glory and spoil to the victor 
involves death and shame and poverty to the 
defeated; and the exultant cry, “Woe to the van¬ 
quished/’ rings from page to page like the ancient 
roar that shook the forest. Peace and decay are 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 7 


synonymous terms; truce and treaty are fictions 
by which to gain an advantage. No agreement 
or law should be respected a moment longer than 
it can be enforced; for while “woe to the van¬ 
quished’ ’ is the motto of the victor, “vengeance 
on the victor” is the only thought of the van¬ 
quished. And never for a moment does this 
evangelist of victory question the right of the 
vanquished to all the vengeance they can take. 
For Might is equally Right wherever it may be— 
in palace or hovel,*in the jeweled sword of the 
king or the poisoned dagger of the slave. 

This complete acceptance of the gospel of force 
is not only logical, but necessary to maintain the 
balance of power and preserve the race. With¬ 
out aspiring slaves waiting for the chance to slay 
them and seize their wealth and power the Masters 
become careless, weak, stupid, degenerate, and 
the breeders of dwindlings. The base slave who 
insults Life by consenting to live may always 
redeem himself and justify his existence by kill¬ 
ing his master; but if he accepts slavery as his 
portion, and fails to strike when opportunity 
offers, he sinks beneath contempt, and deserves 
nothing but the blackness of darkness forever. 
The one word of cheer and counsel for the crushed 
and wounded is, “Be dangerous to the end.” 
Call back a remnant of your honor by striking 
down the conquerer with the last movement of 
your arm; and if that fails bequeath to your 
posterity deathless vows of unlimited vengeance. 

This attitude of the vanquished is not only due 
to himself, but needful to prove the victor really 
worthy of the spoil. The man mighty in battle 



8 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


who strikes down his foes right and left, and then 
shows that the seeds of degeneracy have taken 
root in his heart by going to the succor of his 
fallen foe is a potential craven, and should be 
slain before dishonoring the place of power and 
leaving a servile progeny to blight the earth. 
And not only is it foolish to raise up a wounded 
enemy, but it is both right and expedient to burn 
and crucify the prisoners, because a soldier who sur¬ 
renders when he might die sword in hand deserves 
death, and should receive it in the worst form as 
a warning to others to quit themselves like men 
and be dangerous to the end; for only so can 
glorious war fully fulfill its saving function by 
separating the valiant who are fit to live from the 
servile who are devoted to death. 

Following out this thought, it is evident that 
any agreement, custom, restraint, ethical vagary 
or humanitarian bosh that keeps two men or 
tribes or nations from plunging into relentless 
war to settle the first doubt about which is the 
strongest, and therefore the best, is an invasion 
of the Cosmic Scheme for the survival of the 
fittest—a fundamental law which is meaningless 
if the unfit survive also. Then progress stops, 
and decay begins; and if rebellion or invasion 
does not cleanse the land by fire and sword, 
famine and pestilence finally come to blot out 
the rotten millions, and make room for new 
creatures having in their nostrils the breath of 
life, in their veins the blood of men, and in their 
loins the seed of conquerors who will again chastise 
the nations with scorpions and rule them with 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 9 


rods of iron in the spirit of living loyality to the 

power of Might—the eternal Right. 

“Might was Right when Ceasar bled 
Upon the stones of Rome; 

Might was Right when Joshua led 
His hords o’er Jordan’s foam. 

And Might was Right when German troops 
Poured down through Paris gay— 

‘Tis the Logic of the Ancient World, 

And the Gospel of To-day. 

Cain’s knotted club is scepter still— 

Your “Rights of man” is Fraud; 

Christ’s ethics are for creeping things; 

True Manhood smiles at God. 

For Might is Right when empires sink 
In storms of steel and flame, 

And it is Right when weakling herds 
Are hunted down like game. 

Then what’s the use of dreaming dreams 
That “each shall get his own?” 

By forceless votes of meek-eyed thralls, 

Who blindly sweat and moan? 

No! a curse is on their cankered brain— 

Their very bones decay. 

Go, trace your fate in the iron game, 

Is the Logic of To-day. 

The Strong must ever rule the Weak, 

Is grim Primordial Law; 

On Earth’s broad racial threshing floor 
The Meek are beaten straw. 



10 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


Then ride to power o’er foemen’s necks, 

Let nothing bar your way; 

If you are Fit you’ll rule and reign, 

Is the Logic of To-day. 

You must prove your Right by deeds of Might— 
Of splendor and renown; 

If need be march through flames of hell 
To dash opponents down. 

For sword-strong races rule the earth 
And ride the conqueror’s car; 

And Liberty has ne’er been won 
Except by deeds of war. 

Might was Right when Gidean led 
The chosen tribes of old; 

And it was Right when Titus burned 
Their Temple roofed with gold. 

And Might was Right from Bunker Hill 
To far off Monterey— 

By land and flood it’s wrote in blood— 

The Gospel of To-day. 

Might was Right when Carthage flames 
Lit up the Punic Foam; 

And when the naked steel of Gaul 
Bore down the spoil of Rome. 

And Might was Right when Richmond fell, 

And at Thermopalye— 

‘Tis the Logic of the Ancient World, 

And the Gospel of To-day.” 

The frank analysis of Civilization from this 

standpoint is refreshing and instructive. Every 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 11 


historical and contemporary assault on the 
“Logic of the Ancient World” is riddled with 
charming candor. He naturally pounces on Jesus 
as the erotic leader of the decadent masses, and 
execrates him as the representative of all that is 
base and vile in a really fallen race. He shows 
how the fundamental ideas of all religions unfit 
men for the relentless war on which life depends— 
make them, indeed, unfit to live. This is how he 
contrasts the Truths of Nature with the False¬ 
hoods of Religion: 

“Blessed are the Strong, for they shall possess 
the Earth. Crused are the Weak; for they shall 
inherit the yoke. 

“Blessed are the Bold, for they shall be Masters 
of the world. Cursed are the Humble, for they 
shall be trodden under hoofs. 

“Blessed are the Victorious, for victory is the 
basis of Right. Cursed are the Vanquished, for 
•they shall be Vassals forever. 

“Blessed are the Audacious, for Beauty shall 
smile upon them. Cursed are the Poor in Spirit, 
for they shall breed Creeplings. 

“Blessed are the Valiant, for they shall obtain 
great treasures. Cursed are the Lambs of God, 
for they shall be bled whiter than snow. 

“Blessed are the Wise and Brave in battle, 
for they shall win. Cursed is he who doeth good 
to others, for he shall be despised. 

“Blessed are the Unmerciful, for their posterity 
shall own the World. Cursed are the Pitiful, for 
they shall receive no pity.” 

With an eye still flaming with the fierce, 
elemental Life of the Jungle he notes the blighting 



12 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


sweep of religious and ethical Ideals over the 
earth, and thus apostrophises the accepted 
Leader of the Gospel of Degeneration: 

“ Blond Prince of all Evil 
In the garb of a Saint, 

Still weaving and weaving 
Thy magical Feint. 

i 

Round millions you’ve woven 
A hypnotic spell; 

O Christ! thou Mephisto, 

The mocker of Hell. 

There’s not in thy teaching 
One thought that is true; 

Thou art a False Prophet, 

O, crucified Jew.” 

After Religion has been disposed of, the chief 
objects of his wrath are modern Democracy and 
Socialism. The loss of personal power in the imper¬ 
sonal State; the doing to death of the Individual 
in the Peon Puddle around the ballot box; the 
world-wide conspiracy of decadent mongrels to 
crush the Remnant of the Wise and Strong by 
pooling their puny interests, hiding their incom¬ 
petence under the mask of Citizenship, and 
founding orphanages and asylums to keep alive 
even the runts of their dwindling breed—all this 
represents to his mind the Abomination of 
Desolation standing where it ought not—even 
at the Fountain of Life, robbing the Future of its 
Birthright in the mighty Past. 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 13 


Not only does Democracy and Socialism 
threaten the world by federating erotic decadence 
against heroic virtue, disease against health and 
dementa against sanity; but it renders the doing 
of the daily work of the present time increasingly 
difficult. When the intelligence of the natural 
Leader is hampered by the ignorance of the 
Mob, and the commands which should be instantly 
given and obeyed have to run the gauntlet of 
stupid debates, idiotic roll-calls, and that climax 
of erotic madness, the ballot-box — then, 
indeed, may we know that the end is at hand; 
for such a country is rotten ripe for the blessed 
plague and welcome pestilence to sweep away 
the slave-citizen, who wears the face of a Man 
as a lie, and the putrid State—the Refuge of Lies. 

He also shows how the black shadow of Govern¬ 
ment has blighted the earth by putting an end 
to private combat and revenge, which are essen¬ 
tial to the preservation of personal worth and 
power. When man is no longer bred and trained 
especially to be a fighting animal, he ceases to be 
a Man, and becomes a Thing. True, the Thing 
still fights, for war is universal, and can never be 
evaded; but his fighting is now ignoble instead 
of noble, a debauchery rather than a virtue, his 
shame instead of his glory. The very struggle 
for existence, which, in the Natural World, raised 
him from a jelly-fish to a lion, and from a lion to 
a man, becomes his undoing in the reactionary 
eddy of Civilization; and he degenerates from a 
lion to a fox, from a fox to a jackal, and from a 
jackal to a viper. Behold the fruit of the tree 
of Democracy: 



14 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


“We fight like women, and feel as such; 

The thoughts of our hearts we guard. 

Where the scorn of a God should scarcely touch 
The sneer of a fool hits hard. 

The treacherous tongue and the cowardly pen— 
The weapons of curs—decide! 

They faced each other and fought like Men, 

In the days when the world was wide. ,, 

Well and clearly does he distinguish between 
the iron rule of honest Might by those who have 
and use it, and the indirect despotism bolstered 
up by hired satraps, cunning flattery, and the 
baseness that stoops to conquer. Such are mod¬ 
ern Governments of every kind, for 

“Statute books and Golden Rules 
Were made to fetter Slaves and Fools/’ 

And this is especially true of Republics, where the 
duped people are lulled by the delusion that they 
are themselves the State, and make their own 
slave-laws. It was degenerate Tyrants, afraid to 
face the righteous judgment of the sword, who 
exploited the woozy phantom of Democracy and 
the glittering baubles of Religion as a means of 
preserving their own hides and perquisites. 

“Thus did the great Guile-Masters 
Their toils and their tangles set; 

And wide as were the waters, 

So wide was woven the net.” 

Looking at the present age, so woefully de¬ 
generate, according to the standards of his 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 15 


primeval youth, he declares that “the living 
forces of Evil are to be found in Moral Ideals.” 
Democracy, if honestly advocated, is “the stridant 
doctrine of the maniac,” the “hope of mildewed 
minds,” the refuge of “men without sap,” the 
dream of “mental castrates”; floating down the 
“dark stream of decadence” and “dwindling into 
multitudenous nothingness.” Morality, spring¬ 
ing from the “sterilized minds of mental gildings,” 
is for subordinates only. “Nature’s curse is on 
the meek and lowly/ for “courage that looks 
down with supreme disdain upon all ideas of 
right and wrong,” includes every virtue, and 
humility every crime. “God choose the foolish, 
weak and despised things of the world” perforce, 
because nothing else would have anything to do 
with him; and so the wholesale destruction of 
feeble types and dwindling races is not only a 
natural and congenial, but necessary occupation. 
Christianity, that dream of “Epileptoid Priest¬ 
lings of Unreason,” is the “negation of everything 
grand, noble and .heroic,” and the “glorification 
of everything feeble, attrocious, dishonorable 
and dastardly.” The “Divine Democrat” was 
executed on a government gibbet because the 
ruler of Imperial Rome was a stronger, and there¬ 
fore a better man. Being the weakest, it was 
right for him to “die an abysmal failure—a Re¬ 
deemer who did not redeem—a slave agitator 
deservedly destroyed for preaching a falsehood— 
the monstrous falsehood of Love, Brotherhood 
and Equality.” 

Here are a few choice shots from his unmasked 



16 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


batteries of pristine scorn, dwindling into a pre¬ 
dilection for epigrams: 

“Christianity is a world-wide conspiracy of 
Decadents against all the Heroic Virtues.” 

“The bones of those who drew up and signed 
the Bill of Rights, Magna Charta, the Sermon on 
the Mount, and the Declaration of Independence, 
have long ago mouldered into ozone and fertilizer. 
Rotten are the brains that conceived them, and 
the fingers that signed and sealed them. Equally 
rotten are their irrational and infantile philoso¬ 
phies. Rotten also in heart are the men who 
obey these voices from the tomb.” 

“Constitutions are all very well to humbug 
stridulating slaves, but in a freeman’s house or 
business they have no place.” 

“Socialism, Christianity and Democracy are 
the whining yelpings of base-bred mongrels.” 

“Equality is the summed up dement a of two 
thousand years.” 

“They who accept the Faith, Hope and Charity 
ideal in any form are degenerates.” 

“Moral dogmas are always manufactured to 
suit the occasion, and used as instruments of in¬ 
timidation.” 

“Those who claim Mastership on any other 
basis than conquest are upstart usurpers, and 
should be stricken down without mercy.” 

“The strong and mighty ones are Nature’s 
Noblemen, in whom she delights. The poor and 
lowly are a creeping pestilence—the down-trodden 
are the justly damned.” 

“The cant about Moral Principles is one of th:> 
tricks in the game of dog eat dog.” 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 17 


“Black, furious and tragic are and always have 
been the bloody annals of Evolution.” 

“This world is too peaceful and tame. It is a 
circumcised world—nay, a castrated world. It 
must be made fiercer and more natural. Maniacs 
are they who would ward off the sun’s blazing 
rays from writhing souls, or the wintry blasts 
from hearts already broken.” 

“Deep, permanent and abiding is the elemental 
antagonism between the Sociology of the Man of 
Nazareth and the Primordial Laws of the Uni¬ 
verse.” 

“All the prophetic demagogs of Democracy 
from Isaiah and Paul to Carlyle and Ruskin, 
screeching against the march of bannered armies, 
are but dogs baying the moon.” 

“Democracy! thou leperous thing! thou loth- 
some disease! thou plastic demon! thou murderer 
of men! Many nations have bowed down to thy 
infection, and perished from the earth; but 
America shall arise and wipe thee out—thou 
blightsome malady—thou human rinderpest!” 

“Christs may come and Christs may go, but 
Ceasar reigns forever.” 

As we might expect from the rest of his pre¬ 
sentment, our taloned and talented author speaks 
approvingly of cannibalism, and hopes the time is 
coming when rejuvenated Man will again roast 
and eat his vanquished enemy as in the good old 
days. He even notes with pride that a part of 
the earth was once properly ruled over and made 
worth while by noble lords who kept herds of 
female slaves for the purpose of raising out of 
their own loins fat, juicy children for the banquet- 



18 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


board—and who showed their practical grasp of 
the Utilitarian Philosophy by having the mothers 
served up to the lackeys when their breeding 
days were over. 

His ideal of the correct attitude of Man toward 
Woman is that of the master mechanic toward 
his tools. The female organism is the most 
valuable asset of the Masculine Universe; and he 
defines woman as “two-thirds womb,” and the 
other third nerves and sentiments thereunto per¬ 
taining. Incidentally, she is convenient as a 
slave, but in general her work, her place, her whole 
sphere should be determined with the one end in 
view of making her the most efficient mother of 
the greatest number of the strongest fighting 
animals she is capable of producing. The idea 
that she should have anything to say about it 
herself is* merely another incident of modern 
dementa. 

Having lived so much nearer than we do to the 
beginning of things he ought to know something 
about that interesting period. He agrees with 
our Scientists that the solar system was once a 
vast whirling fire-mist, which contracted to form 
the sun, while outlying portions broke loose and 
whirled into shape and place as planets. He na¬ 
turally revels in that Cosmic Panorama of ele- 
metal fury, and brightly says that the earth was 
“the product of secondary cyclonic rage.” This 
terse and satisfactory statement is supposed to 
account for, and justify, “the Logic of the Ancient 
World, and the Gospel of To-day.” 

Having given his point of view as a background, 
I may remark, before going on to develop my own, 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 19 


that nothing he says is at all abhorrent or offen¬ 
sive to me. I am content to be amused and in¬ 
structed by his verbal explosions of primary and 
secondary cyclonic rage; and welcome his brutal, 
and therefore free and shameless exposure of the 
secret parts of his mental and moral anatomy, 
because, knowing him whom I have seen through, 
I also know you, who would consider such ex¬ 
amination impertinent. I can smile, without 
resentment, at his vicious attack on Jesus of 
Nazareth, just as if it was aimed directly at my¬ 
self; and I trust that others will do likewise. 

We must note in the first place that he uses 
a great deal of Truth in his argument. His 
analysis of the Old Order he knows so well is 
very good; and although his conception of the real 
origin and purpose of governments and religions 
is necessarily inadequate, his picture of them in 
actual use is strikingly true to life. Except for 
brief periods, and in special cases, every State 
and Church has been, and still is, a tool in the 
hands of the Great Guile-Masters, and exploited 
to befuddle and enslave the masses of Mankind. 

His condemnation of Democracy, as a subtle 
flanking movement of these same Guile-Masters 
to preserve their fictitious supremacy, is largely 
true; and so is the arraignment of it as the climax 
of social inefficiency and absurdity. On the 
theory that the best government is that which 
governs least, it is a good thing, and carried to 
its logical conclusion will make all government 
ridiculously impossible. That is the contributa- 
tion of the Democratic Ideal to Humanity, and 
we rejoice to see it doing its work so well. But 



20 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


when we try to carry it over from political into 
industrial affairs, where the highest efficiency is 
desired, instead of the lowest inefficiency, it 
becomes an evil thing—one phase, at least, of 
“the summed up dementa of two thousand years.” 

His objection to Socialism is founded on his 
crude, elemental conception of Individuality, 
coupled with the natural tendency of such minds 
to regard the Social Commonwealth as a mechan¬ 
ically ordered institution, governed by an arbi¬ 
trary and rigid program. An argument from 
such premises needs no answer; and as the brethren 
of that stripe would not be very good Socialists 
anyway, it is well to leave them to find their own 
way into the dispensation of graceful service. 

Much, the same may be said of his attitude 
toward Woman; but his striking definition of 
her as “two-thirds womb” is much more nearly 
true than could ever be demonstrated by the 
scales or the tape-line. I fancy a woman of the 
best modern type—a real New Woman, and not 
a new caricature of Womanhood—would smile 
at such a charge, and find it sufficient to say: 
“Well, what would you expect? Wist ye not 
that I am an Incarnation of the Divine Feminine, 
and must be about my Mother’s business?” 

The denunciation of the modern man as a 
weakling, a degenerate, an erotic dwindling, etc., 
is pretty well substanciated by the facts. Having 
ceased to be a good animal, and not yet begun 
to be any good as an angel, he is a very unsatis¬ 
factory proposition. Our poor, deluded sweet¬ 
hearts don’t say much about it, and gracefully 
let us in on the ground floor because we are the 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 21 


best to be had. But the genuine twentieth 
century Girl, with rich, red blood in her arteries 
and an electrical heart warranted, not to miss a 
beat for a hundred years, would sweep a whole 
regiment of current male monkeys out of the way 
like pawns from a chess-board, if an old Norse 
Pirate came a-wooing in proper elemental fashion. 
And I trust that a little later, when the real New 
Man appeared to be her heaven-sent Mate, the 
biggest Viking bold who ever struck terror along 
the coast would get wise to his finish, and silently 
steal away. 

And her attitude would be correct in both cases; 
for the glorification of Power is a vital point on 
which the gentleman from Pliocea is everlastingly 
right. His mistake is in not seeing that as Life 
advances Power is transmuted into finer forms 
and higher potencies. Power has not decayed; 
but he has failed to keep step with its changing 
manifestation. Being stuck on the wisdom of his 
own generation, he neglected to provide for his 
own eternal salvation while being milled through 
the Evolutionary Ages. And there have been, 
and still are, others. 

About the time I read his stridant protest 
against what he missed, the good gray head of 
that splendid woman, Susan B. Anthony, nodded 
into the Big Sleep, and I selected these lines from 
the poetic tributes to her memory as a concise 
and inspired answer to his whole argument for 
Elemental Superiority: 

“No dead march beating on the air, no roll of 

muffled drum, 




22 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


Yet hath she fought as brave a fight as ever soldier 
won. 

Her weapons were of soul and brain, her white 
flag lettered peace, 

Her own heart bled, and yet again, and on with¬ 
out surcease. 

She charged the ranks of foemen forever in the 
van, 

And by conquering Right for Woman she hath 
also won for Man.” 

Do you think there was no historic development 
back of this grand woman, whose appearance was 
impossible according to our brilliant author? If 
the doctrine of Reincarnation is true she may 
have been his jungle-mate in long gope Pliocea, 
and the mighty spirit that in its crude beginning 
developed in claw and fang, the same that yester¬ 
day, increased a thousand fold in the refining 
furnaces of Life, flashed before us as one of the 
most magnificent Incarnations of the Divine 
Feminine the world has ever known. And per¬ 
haps her glorious work was largely done for him— 
an effort of transmuted but undying pristine love 
to arouse him to a realization of the littleness, 
the weakness and the meanness of his undeveloped 
state—a concentrated call of God to a lost soul 
to come up higher. 

It is right here that we have to face the whole 
issue, accept his terms, and challenge him to a 
show-down. Might is Right, as he says, and the 
only Right. God’s battalions are always the 
strongest, regardless of external appearances; and 
they always win. The Law of the vortex of cyclonic 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 23 


rage, the Law of the Jungle, the Law of Rome 
and Gaul and Britain, is the Law of the world 
today, and will be the Law of the Social Com¬ 
monwealth, and of the Golden Age beyond. 
The Strong must ever rule the Weak is Millennial 
as well as Primordial Law; and “go, trace your 
fate in the iron game,” is the Cosmic command 
to every living thing, from the crawling worm 
beneath our feet to the great high Gods above. 
Power is the supreme expression of Life, and 
Life is all that we are, and all with which we have 
to do. Claw and Fang, the knotted club, the 
sword, gunpowder, dynamite, the stridant voice 
of the Demagogue, and the smooth, persuasive 
flow of magnetic oratory, are preliminary forms 
by which the Dynamic Energy of the rising Entity 
in Being gets in its work on the Environment 
over which it is ordained to have dominion 
After these modes of expression have played 
their part and passed away, come the greater and 
subtler powers of Silent Thought, Vital Feeling, 
and the Illumined Will, by which we may dispense 
with all instruments and mediums, and exercise 
immediate dominion over all material things, and 
participate in the Cosmic functions of the Uni¬ 
verse. 

There is no degeneracy or weakening here, but 
the changing forms of the ever-changing Right 
of Unfolding Might. The saber-toothed tiger 
disappears and so does the wolf and bear. The 
cannibal chief is gone; and so are the slave- 
masters and imperial despots. Just now the 
proud possessors of tainted dollars and babbling 
tongues hold the center of the stage; but they, 



24 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


too, shall pass away. Already the higher potencies 
of Thought and Will are making themselves felt 
in every avenue of life. The man comparatively 
weak in body and so gentle that he would not step 
upon a worm, but who knows himself, can lay 
aside every weapon and walk unharmed among 
such savage beasts as remain to remind us of the 
former days; and they prudently respect an 
invisible power they cannot understand, but 
against which they know their claws and fangs 
are powerless. Another of God Almighty’s 
Gentlemen, not at all formidable to the outward 
eye, and so truly gentle that he will not strive in 
the pulpit or lift up his voice on street or platform, 
can quietly block the games of Financial Mag¬ 
nates, and confound the councils of the Princes 
of this world, who fancy the wisdom of their 
Mortal Minds is greater than that of the Children 
of Light. 

Naturally there is a tragedy in the passing of 
the old familiar forms of use and power. The 
strong body of the beast, the pomp and regalia 
of war, and the crushing power of wealth in untold 
millions, become dear to us, and we see them go 
with the feeling that the best of Life is lost. 
Like the worm who sadly but bravely spins his 
tomb and seals himself up to die, unconscious of 
the glorified body with which he shall soon come 
forth, we weep over the sunset memories of a 
golden age that has passed away like a dream, 
and fail to note the auroral splendor that makes 
all things new. It nearly breaks our hearts to 
see the Half-Gods go; but we should awake to 
the fact that they have merely gone a-courting, 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 25 


and will presently return with their better halves 
to reign with us in such power and glory as we 
have never known, and scarcely dared to dream. 

The degenerate, the weakling, the dwindling 
who spawns away into multitudinous nothingness, 
is he who lacks the ambition and appreciative 
instinct needed to keep in tune with the Changing 
Order and lead the crest of Tidal Evolution from 
form to form. For his erotic and submerged 
soul dementa and decay are very real and awful 
things, and the best he can do for posterity is to 
omit it entirely. Once there was a very foolish 
monkey who hearkened to the still small voice of 
God saying in the rudimentary ear of his embry¬ 
onic soul, “Arise, and get thee up out of thy 
country, and from thy kindred and from thy father’s 
house, and be a Man, even as I showed thee in the 
vision in the top of yonder bamboo tree;” and 
all the wise, conservative monkeys, who wanted 
to be true to the traditions of the fathers of an 
age about to pass away forever, had lots of fun 
at his expense. But what do the descendants 
of those monkeys, chattering for our amusement 
in the Zoo, think of them today? 

And those who have seen the Open Vision, 
even through a glass darkly, know that the seem¬ 
ing loss of the advancing ones is for a season only. 
As I hinted just now, the real New Man, with a 
physical make-up approximating toward the 
Resurrection Body, is one against whom the 
Elemental Man has no chance in any trial of 
strength or beauty. It is in line with the wisdom 
of God that we should be cursed, as we think, with 
weak and homely bodies that we might be forced 




26 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


to develop the latent powers of soul and brain. 
Thus it seems true that we grow weaker and 
wiser; but when the soul has found itself and 
mastered the secrets of the higher spheres, it can 
turn as a living savior to the body and reward 
it with greater power and beauty than it ever 
attained unto in its own peculiar Golden Age. 
In the field of Divine Realization Woman is 
naturally and necessarily ahead of Man; and it 
is in her that the Christ Child first appears to 
grow in wisdom and stature, and find favor with 
God and Man. The New Woman is be¬ 
coming large and strong and a-lilt with more 
than skin-deep beauty because she is turning on 
the home stretch of the heavenly race, and her 
body commences to reflect the auroral power 
and splendor of her mind and soul. 

The Gospel of Today is an assertation of the 
Divine Right of Infinite Might to rule and reign 
in Brahamic Bliss and Splendor. It comes with 
the resistless force of countless aeons of Cosmic 
Evolution behind it, and aims at the actual 
demonstration of all power in heaven and on 
earth. Its meek and lowly heralds do not 
hesitate to assail the citadels of hell, and make 
the sweet-voiced ministers of love flames of 
living fire to burn the way to glory. We are 
here to break down the prison doors, proclaim 
liberty to all the inhabitants of the earth, and 
preach the gospel of Infinite Oppulence to the 
poor. We have come to open blind eyes and 
deaf ears, enable the lame to walk, and cause the 
sad to laugh for joy. Our business is to heal the 
sick, cleanse the lepers and raise the dead in 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 27 


despair to lives of pristine radiance. Incidentally 
we have to sweep ?way all the Institutions with 
which the Mortal Mind has hedged itself about, 
and let each Individual stand erect as a self- 
sufficient dynamic center of Invincible Power and 
Eternal Life. For this cause came we forth as 
living Words of God, and expect to accomplish 
that which He pleases and prosper in the thing 
whereunto we are sent. As Minister-Plentipoten- 
tiaries of Jehovah we claim all power in heaven 
and on earth, and if we fail to make good He 
will raise up other Sons and Daughters able to 
render a better account of their ministery. 

Looking back over the Way of Life by which 
we have come, where tragic centuries stand as 
mile-posts, we accept the “ Logic of the Ancient 
World” as the basis of our own Evangelism, and 
welcome this stridant cry from the great soul 
of a Brother lost in the jungles of psychological 
Pliocea as evidence of the eternal truth of the 
Gospel of Power. By it we also get a line on the 
pit from whence we came, which enables us to 
approximately determine the direction and dis¬ 
tance of the “One far off Divine Event toward 
which the whole Creation moves.” And seeing 
this we may gladly accept the strenuous challenge 
of the Elemental Man, send back a ringing yes 
to all his vital points, and transmit the Law and 
Gospel of the Aspiring Past to the coming cen¬ 
turies of Fulfillment. Yes— 

“Might was Right when Carthage flames 
Lit up the Punic Foam; 

And when the naked steel of Gaul 



28 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


Bore down the spoil of Rome. 

And Might was Right when Richmond fell, 
And at Thermopalye— 

Tis the Logic of the Ancient World, 

And the Gospel of Today!” 

And Might will still be Right when Love 
Sets every prisoner free; 

And when the Gods of Lust and War 
Are swept from land and sea. 

And Might will reign as transformed Right 
In splendid' majesty, 

When Man shall rise and on the skies 
Emblazon Liberty. 

“Might was Right when Gidean led 
The Chosen Tribes of old; 

And it was Right when Titus burned 
Their Temple roofed with gold. 

And Might was Right from Bunker Hill 
To far off Monterey— 

By land and flood it’s wrote in blood— 
The Gospel of Today”. 

The Force of God in Man and Clod 
Still rules the Universe. 

Almighty Power speaks every hour, 

In thunder and in verse. 

And Might shall be the only Right 
From Hell to Paradise— 

By sun and star Tis flung afar— 

The emblem of the Wise. 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 29 


IGNORANCE—THE NEGATION 
OF BLISS. 

Ignorance—the state in which we ignore—is 
the great negation of all things. It results from 
a lack of consciousness; and consciousness is 
Life. So, to be ignorant is to be dead—dead 
indeed to all things we are ignorant of. The tree 
is ignorant of the man with the axe—dead already 
to that part of its environment; and the man 
takes up that mental negation, and transforms it 
into a paramount fact. 

The specialized ignorance we are now discussing 
comes from inability or disinclination to think 
clearly and dynamically. Sometimes people are 
ready and able to think plentifully on certain 
subjects, and yet remain ignorant for lack of the 
necessary definite information—the subject-mat¬ 
ter, without which thinking is nearly useless. If 
any of you are in that fix, I can only advise you 
to exhibit your passport from Mo. and ask to be 
shown—upon compliance with which formality 
it will probably happen to you as it did to a friend 
of mine who once ventured an astronomical ob¬ 
servation, only to be promptly corrected by a 
better informed member of the company; where¬ 
upon he philosophically remarked, “Well, my 
ignorance is exploded.” I am not sure whether 
he used “exploded” as a synonym for “exposed” 
or “gone off”; but that is a detail we need not be 
particular about. Our present concern is with 



30 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


the exhibition people make of themselves when 
they cannot or will not think. And, least anyone 
should begin with the thought that I am too per¬ 
sonal, let me say at once that constitutional 
inability to conceive promptly and bring forth 
properly is the leading characteristic of the 
Mortal Mind in all the stages of its development. 

It has been my good fortune, as a student of 
cogitative pathology, to be acquainted with people 
in nearly every class and station whose mental 
fingers were all thumbs, and all the prehensile 
faculties of their minds the behind ones, and 
prone to travel by freight because the side en¬ 
trance is convenience amplified. It naturally 
followed that every string they touched in the 
harp of Life produced a discord, and of course 
they had hell to burn, while native awkwardness 
insured their own contemporaneous incineration. 
If you are not accustomed to being called a 
chump, lobster, dunderhead, mutt, and other 
such pet names you may thank your stars that 
your enemies are usually polite and your friends 
as dense as you are. But, without further in¬ 
vidious remark about present company, let us 
think kindly of the thickheaded one who is not 
here because he cannot recognize a good thing 
when it comes his way. 

Come to think of it, the date of each invention 
and discovery shows how long it took the race to 
catch on to that particular idea. Our prehistoric 
progenitor, with his cave, club and clout, might 
have had all the modern conveniences and 
luxuries if he had been smart enough to think 
them out and strenuous enough to clothe his 




STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 31 


thoughts in material form. What attenuated 
galaxies of muling generations scalded their 
fingers with steam before waking up to the fact 
that it might be put in steel harness and set to 
work! What interminable battalions of lobsters 
crawled and humped themselves over the earth 
without getting wise to the economic possibilities 
flashing out of the clouds, and corralling the* 
lightening to be their steed and messenger! What 
countless millions of muling slaves have crouched 
and delved at the beck of masters, kings and 
priests for lack of ability to think coherently, and 
draw pertinent conclusions from impertinent 
facts! And are not nine-tenths of the human 
race in darkness and poverty to-day because they 
do not possess the mental ability to see through 
the deceptions and delusions fostered upon them 
by the ruling classes! In fact, to bring the sub¬ 
ject as near home as we dare on such an occasion 
as this, don’t we all know some incorrigable fool 
who always votes for the other party, and really 
believes we are trying to run the country straight 
to the demnition bow-wows! 

But these are glittering generalities, and I am 
here to exploit the paralyzing incapacity for deal¬ 
ing with concrete problems that ever distin¬ 
guishes the Mortal Mind, and makes life as we 
know it stale, flat and unprofitable. In a general 
way we may be enslaved and robbed by others, 
and caught in the net of social delusion; but if 
we turned a sane and awakened mind on our per¬ 
sonal affairs we could so improve our condition 
and gain such a foothold and headway that no 
vested ignorance or hereditary stupidity or in- 



32 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


trenched insanity could prevail against us. Of 
course that makes you think of the gross ignorance 
of people who squander their financial and physi¬ 
cal and moral substance and demonetize their 
brains with liquor and tobacco and the damning 
folly of the gambler and libertine. Yes, I mean 
all that, and much more. I mean the thoughtless 
bondage to vested folly that makes the pocket 
light and the head heavy by guzzling tea and 
coffee, and poisoning the body with meat and 
cake and candy. I mean the functional ignorance 
of those who do not know that they can dine just 
as well in a fifteen-cent restaurant as in one where 
the price is three or four times as much. And I 
mean the criminally thoughtless waste of all sorts 
of food, wholesome and unwholesome. We all 
know that when Jesus freely tapped the Infinite 
Supply of an Opulent Universe to feed hungry 
thousands he had the fragments carefully saved 
for future use; but so generally is this divine 
example ignorantly ignored that a wise rich man 
could live well on what the average poor fool 
family throws away. Are you silly enough to 
•fancy that sparrows are the only little things of 
whose fall and ruin Infinite Wisdom makes judi¬ 
cial note? Verily, I say unto you, that the loving 
eye of God is on every apple and peach ripening 
in the sun, and every potato swelling with stored 
up life-stuff in the warm, rich ground; and who¬ 
soever offends and misuses one of these nuggets 
of Cosmic Wealth offends the Source of Life, and 
sends out upon the ether a dark karmetic boom¬ 
erang that will return in some crucial judgment 
hour to testify against his ungenerate soul. Pass- 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 33 


irig through the streets at the season when work¬ 
ingmen buy five-cent sacks of grapes for dessert, 
I have noticed that many a man would eat what 
he wanted at the moment and carelessly throw 
the rest of his precious purchase in the gutter. 
And the sight fills my soul with mingled pity and 
indignation; for the man so constitutionally 
reckless, so instinctively improvident, so organic¬ 
ally at variance with the fundamental principles 
of Divine Economy, as to do that, is a dangerous 
citizen, and not fit to either breed or vote. 

And I also mean the witless insanity that 
causes people to prink themselves up like painted 
monkeys in costly, ugly and uncomfortable 
mummy suits, instead of dressing cheaply for 
service, simplicity and good taste. I mean the 
whole deleterious empire of bosh, humbug and 
apeishness, in crazy loyality to which you wreck 
and ruin your fine, sweet, beautiful lives in order 
to keep up artificial appearances and hide an 
honest four hundred dollar foundation under a 
false one thousand dollar front. I mean the em¬ 
battled affinity for the Abomination of Desola¬ 
tion that makes our civilization a hideous mock¬ 
ery, and prostitutes the words “lady” and 
“gentleman” to signify nearly all that they would 
not mean on lips attuned to speak the thoughts 
of a brain that was on to its job. Why have you 
workers of the world always been slaves instead 
of masters and ruled instead of rulers? Well, as 
you haven't sense enough to answer that question 
for yourselves, I'll answer it for you. It is be¬ 
cause your foolish heads and wicked hearts have 
always entertained the strange and anti-angelic 




34 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


ideals of your lords and masters; and you wasted 
the precious substance of your heads, hearts and 
pockets in efforts to mimic their debaucheries and 
appear like them in their shame and folly. The 
workingman who is proud of his progress and 
thinks the world is coming on all right because 
he can sport a fifty-dollar suit on Sunday and 
own a pew in his employer’s church, deserves to 
live and die a slave or a pimp, and probably will. 
But if he nobly scorned to wear anything costing 
over ten dollars, put half the difference into the 
Socialist propaganda, and spent the other half 
for books written by men whose brains and souls 
were alive, the Social Revolution would come so 
quick and glorious that all the discharged preach¬ 
ers would have to admit it was the genuine 
millennium. If you know these things, blessed 
are ye if ye do them; and if you do not know 
them you are numbered with those who perish 
for lack of knowledge. 

Let me give several concrete examples of the 
constitutional inability of the Mortal Mind to 
think effectively about even the simplest things: 
I once worked for a clever man wh‘o posed as a 
scientific farmer and dairyman, and who made 
more money writing for the agricultural papers 
than by holding the plow handles. When we 
went out to milk I found the stable windows 
darkened with gunney sacks so that the wicked 
fly would cease from troubling at milking time. 
I spoke of it as a bright idea, to which he agreed; 
and added that he had learned the trick long ago, 
used it one summer, and then entirely forgotten 
it for several years, and happened to think of it 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 35 


again several weeks before. That illustrates the 
functional incapacity of the Mortal Mind, even 
when professionally active, to retain, ready for 
use, the few good ideas that do occur to it. 

One place where I had a good opportunity to 
study this mind in all its crudeness and inefficiency 
was a Socialist Colony. Our people were above 
the average of mankind in intelligence, thought¬ 
fulness and earnest purpose, but the horrible ex¬ 
amples of sheer stupidity they furnished would 
fill a volume. For instance, to take the simplest 
illustration, there were several honest, industrious 
man who would lay down their hoes, go to the 
creek in the woods for a drink, and return to 
wander aimlessly over the field, trusting to luck 
or providence to direct their trail across the hoe 
handles. Day after day that would happen, and 
they never learned to set the tools up so they 
could be seen, or make mental note of the place 
by which to find it again. They were wrecks 
who drifted to us because they could hold no job 
outside; and how to place and manage them so as 
to realize the cost of their food and clothes out of 
their good intentions was a serious problem. 
Still more serious was the fact' that, in their way 
and sphere, the intellectual leaders of the colony, 
who were bright enough to hold their own any¬ 
where, according to mortal standards, were just 
as befuddled and inefficient as the rawest chumps. 
They not only could not see for themselves the 
obvious facts essential for their own and the 
colony’s salvation, but were stubbornly blind and 
deaf when the truth was presented and flaunted 
by others, whose general stupidity was just as 



36 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


great, perhaps, but who had certain streaks of 
intelligence intended to supply the organic de¬ 
fects of their comrades. 

After the inevitable, I was talking it over with 
a professional Communist, and cited these facts 
about the constitutional lack of sense to show 
that if nothing else had come up to hasten our 
dissolution we would eventually have been 
starved out. But he was a fool, too, and couldn’t 
see it that way. He had his own prearranged 
program and sterotyped delusion, and thought I 
was a hopeless crank for making that sort of an 
argument. If Sister Mary Baker G. Eddy ever 
had much to do with such people.I don’t blame 
her for declaring so emphatically that “there is 
no life, force or intelligence in Matter.” 

At another time it was my dubious privilege 
to be somewhat associated with a lady who had 
kept house for many years without ever catching 
a glimpse of the top side of the job. If she had 
other work to piddle with she would not think 
about getting a meal till it was time to serve it; 
and then she usually prepared it hind end first 
Everything she did was haphazard, but her 
favorite way was to fry the meat and make the 
coffee first. Next she peeled the potatoes, and, 
if it was one of her bright days, set the table while 
they were boiling. Then, when everything else 
was ready, she would mix up the biscuits and 
keep the whole ranch in simmering suspense while 
they were baking. She meant well, poor thing; 
but that was her way, and the slow passage of 
disastrous years, with their unassimilated treas¬ 
ures of experience, brought no change. She was 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 37 


a good woman, as women come by current facili¬ 
ties, and tried hard to be a helpful factor in the 
world; but her faculty of conception was all 
focused below the belt. Her head was large 
enough, with plenty of gray matter in it; but it 
was a dull gray, and the susceptible empyrian 
faithfully reflected the somber shade on her and 
those with whom she had to do. 

I hope you all see that I am not talking about 
technical skill, mechanical training, or the per¬ 
fection that comes with practice. True intelli¬ 
gence—the capacity for real thought—is the 
innate ability of the mind to grasp any situation, 
old or new, comprehend all its factors, and respond 
by doing the right thing promptly and well, re¬ 
gardless of whether it has ever been done before 
or not. It is the alert, dynamic antithesis of the 
torpid type of mind represented by the faithful 
husband and father who devotedly trudged 
away to mill every week of his life with a sack 
skillfully balanced over his shoulder, containing 
half a bushel of corn in one end and the well- 
worn stone, carried by his father and grandfather, 
in the other. Indeed, training and practice often 
hinder the all important achievement of spon¬ 
taneous self-sufficiency. The man who in learn¬ 
ing to do one thing well has forgotten how to do 
other things at all is the unfortunate victim of a 
criminal process. The mind trained to think 
well on certain lines, but helpless and inarticulate 
in others, is inferior to the free and naturally 
active mind that has not been trained at all. 
The specialization that involves the eclipse of one 
part or member by another is an injury to the 



38 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


whole, and tends to fix and intensify deformity. 
This seductive misdirection of whatever mental 
energy there may be has always been a favorite 
trick of the ruling class. The man toting the 
stone to balance the corn may be the slave of the 
state on one hand and the church on the other, 
but his worst and fundamental slavery is to his 
own dull brain; and if, perchance, he does get a 
revolutionary bug in his large, long ear, his kind 
hearted masters can simply put him wise to the 
fact that two half bushels of corn will balance as 
well as one and the stone, and in sheer gratitude the 
poor brute will respect their pelts and perquisites 
for another generation at least. On some points 
he is probably bright enough; but true bright¬ 
ness—the kind that saves—is not located here or 
there, but glows through the whole mind, and 
radiates on everything. From a pathological 
standpoint we have to classify him with the emin¬ 
ent philosopher who ordered a large hole cut in 
the door for the cat and a smaller one for the 
kitten. Really, the only thing a practical, busi¬ 
ness-like Captain of Industrial Salvation can do 
with such people is to round them up and give 
them a stall, a feed-box, and a place in the tread¬ 
mill. To make them partners in the world’s 
business and listen patiently to their rudimentary 
drivel about what to do and how to do it would 
be to precipitate universal starvation. 

This constitutional tendency of the Mortal 
Mind to play the dunce and funk its job, is not 
confined to its elementary stages, but reaches out 
over Science, Philosophy and Religion, vitiating 
their vital work, and spreading the area of in- 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 39 


sanity to flank the rising tide of hope and reason. 
The famous intellectual giants of ancient Greece, 
while representing the best the Mortal Mind had 
done at that time, were also rotten with meta¬ 
physical debauchery, and their schools were 
brilliant mental vaudeville shows, in which 
humble Truth was made subserviant to stridulat- 
ing Falsehood—hot-beds, in fact, of pedantic 
ignorance and erudite insanity. One of them, 1 
for instance, by long pondering upon Absolute 
Truth in the silent depths of his own little well, 
discovered the scientific fact that a rapidly mov¬ 
ing body could never pass one moving more 
slowly in the same direction, because the inter¬ 
vening space was infinitely devisable, and the 
smallest fraction to which it could be reduced 
was still capable of infinite subdivision, and so 
could never be quite obliterated. And the fine 
scientific mind accepted that Metaphysical demon¬ 
stration as indisputable, in serene ignor—ance of 
the physical fact that all kinds of moving things, 
including their own incorrigible bodies, were con¬ 
stantly overtaking, and actually passing other 
things manifesting less velocity. This psychic 
eclipse of reason is not over yet. I once met a 
man sibilant with scientific lore, who was hope¬ 
lessly stuck on the established dogma that if ice 
or snow was melted in a vessel over a fire, no part 
of the resulting liquid could be heated more than 
one degree above the freezing point until all the 
solid was dissolved. No argument could make 
him disloyal to the text book, and a practical 
demonstration of the falseness of the theory 
failed to shake his faith in it. The poor devil was 



40 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


far from an idiot, in the ordinary meaning of the 
term—he read science on the side, and got a 
living as a hack lawyer and newspaper man. 
But he was metaphysically insane; and the only 
mental safety his poor mind could grasp lay in 
clinging to the accepted decrees of Science, re¬ 
gardless of the protests of his own deceitful senses 
and discredited reason. And yet he was one of 
the “Rational Scientists” who try to save their 
spatulant mugs by looking down on the “Chris¬ 
tian Scientists” as fools and bigots. 

The same fundamental inability to follow the 
straight and narrow way of Truth and Life is 
manifested in all the religious activity of the 
Mortal Mind. In the development of Buddhism, 
for example, all the best in human thought and 
feeling was employed and expanded. Its philo¬ 
sophical foundation was good, and its teaching 
about how to live very true and beautiful. But 
its conclusions about what Life is, why it should 
be lived, and the end to be most earnestly de¬ 
sired, are false and crazy as any maniac’s dream, 
and destroy the value of the mighty mental 
edifice which should have done so much to ad¬ 
vance the glory of the race. It is a pitiful thing 
that the highest thinking of a people devoted to 
thought should faithfully solve so many prob¬ 
lems of Life and patiently learn how to live so 
beautifully, only to render the ridiculous and 
blasphemous ultimatum that Life is evil, and 
Individual Being a mistake, and the abolition of 
both the supreme goal of effort; thus making it 
the object of life to circumvent the law of Life 
and the whole purpose of Creation by retrograd- 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 41 


ing into pre-organic homogenity, which, by 
steadily looking backward, they have set before 
them as the highest ideal of heaven-—their fam¬ 
ous Nirvana. This position is the uttermost 
treason against and infidelity to the eternal 
Truth of Being that the Mortal Mind, in its per¬ 
sistant enmity against God, has ever reached. 

Christianity is another great world religion 
that gives similar damning evidence against its 
creator, the Mortal Mind. It, too, has a splendid 
philosophical and humanitarian basis, its formu¬ 
las for daily life, labor and fellowship are high 
and noble, and the open part of its future vision 
resplendant with truth and beauty. But the 
whole scheme has been saddled, dominated and 
debauched by the nightmare horrors of hell and 
damnation, and the diabolical distortion of an 
honorable God into an impossible monster, to 
account for and harmonize with the Satanic 
addenda to divine inspiration. The constant 
and serious contemplation of the resulting bug- 
house theological comedy has so warped the 
mind and perverted the soul of Christiandom 
that any sane and honorable conception of the 
Universe is almost impossible. The best stroke 
of business the devil ever did was when he got 
next to the holy fathers of the church and moved 
them to write a pen picture of himself and his 
territorial possessions into'their sacred books. 

With crude, pedantic Science on one hand, and 
the rudimentary babbling of souls lost in theo¬ 
logical delusions on the other. Philosophy has 
always been a cheap guy, looking with darkened 
vision through psychic kaleidoscopes. Indeed, 



42 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


we have never had a sanely rounded philosophy— 
never a presentation of Life and its Cosmic Area 
unmarred by elemental whims and fancies of the 
Mortal Mind effervescing in psychic riot. From 
the old Greeks, building cloudy castles of sequi- 
pedalian verbiage in realms of Metaphysical 
delusion, to the brilliant Metaphysical leaders of 
modern New Thought, who are beating the Ath¬ 
enian word jugglers at their own game, there has 
been a continuous panorama of subjective fools 
paradises glossing over the objective succession 
of fools* hells. And Wisdom, always bandied 
about as the servant of Folly, has been the faith¬ 
ful Silent Partner, hiding in the chinks and 
crevices of intellectual Babylon, transfiguring a 
sentence here and there in volumes of elemental 
drivel, and acting generally as the divine dynamic 
leaven to keep the whole barbaric phantasmagoria 
in ceaseless toil and turmoil that the work of 
Creation may still go on. 

This Evolutionary yeast which builds and 
destroys all the petty play-houses of the Mortal 
Mind, is the Living Word of God—the Holy 
Spirit of Life—the Infinite Lure that keeps the 
human soul forever unsatisfied with its highest 
achievements. And in every age the wrath and 
folly of man has served its eternal Creative Pur¬ 
pose. Every despotic state and purblind church 
and moon-struck philosophy has been the instru¬ 
ment of its ministery to the evolving soul. The 
cruel tyrant and blinded bigot and fatuous 
fanatic, and the brain transcending mortal bounds 
in psychic riot, have been its secret messengers, 
each bearing some word or letter of Life’s Infinite 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 43 


Evangel. Even the plodding chump and muling 
slave have builded better than they knew, and 
laid deep and sure foundation for souls worthy 
to rise and reign among the Gods. 

Without this Cosmic Conception of Life’s 
transcendant scope and purpose, the mortal 
stages of Divine Unfoldment would seem dark 
indeed, and its climax in the New Thought 
movement only confirm the ancient Affirmation 
that ‘‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” One 
not versed in the ways of God with men would 
think our foremost teachers given over to psychic 
riot, and reveling in the delusions of the Mortal 
Mind gone mad. And so indeed, they are; but 
under cover of that expanding hysteria the 
Vibrations are going forth that will transform 
the Mortal into the Immortal Mind and usher us 
into celestial spheres of Cosmic Consciousness. 
We are now staggering under the culmulative 
Truth and Falsehood of a million experimental 
years of mental, and spiritual evolution, and the 
actinic beat of the light that never shone on land 
or sea is burning away the dross; and those who 
identify themselves with the dross and make 
Falsehood their Truth, are burning with it. And 
there are two classes, both the victims of func¬ 
tional inability to think straight, who find the 
cleansing fires especially disastrous—the orthodox- 
mudsills who do not see that the Rock of Ages 
is metamorphic as well as metaphorical, and the 
unbalanced enthusiasts who forget that meta¬ 
physics is rooted in physics and goes dead and 
rotten when pulled up and its roots exploited as 
meterological phenomena. That is to say, the 



44 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


Materialist who denies Spirit, and the Metaphysi- 
can who ignores Matter are both lopsided creatures 
whose hemispherical vacuity is abhorrent to the 
Cosmic Scheme of things. Spirit is the Life of 
Matter, and Matter is the Manifestation of Spirit; 
and whosoever putteth assunder these two whom 
God hath joined in Divine Being is a blind leader 
of the blind, and programed to disappear in 
telescopic collision with outer darkness. 

The erotic intellectual repudiation of Matter 
and the senses by which we recognize it by Airs. 
Eddy and her school is only the psychological 
vestibule to the Empire of Illusion now being 
built up by the Mortal Mind under the delusion 
that the effulvia. of its psychic riot is the inspira¬ 
tion of God. The cool, calculating and yet 
fanatical mental warfare against the sanity of 
the Universe which characterizes much of the 
New Thought teaching is the logical conclusion 
and articulate climax of all the illogical and 
inarticulate processes of the Mortal Mind since 
it achieved self-consciousness; and it is also the 
acceptable media under cover of which it is being 
introduced to Cosmic Consciousness. 

The apostle of High Metaphysics with whom 
I am best acquainted and at whose feet I have 
oftenest sat, is a brilliant representative of the 
Mortal Mind at the crest of its development, and 
glowing with Divine Inspiration—just ready, in 
fact, to burst the veil and become a truly Illu¬ 
mined Soul, but so hedged about with Metaphy¬ 
sical delusion and psychic self-deception that he 
cannot come to the New Birth, and has therefore 
been agonizing for years on the verge of physical 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 45 


and mental collapse, leading to either the grave 
or the madhouse. Earnest, magnetic, dramatic, 
and an orator by instinct, profession and inspira¬ 
tion, he compels the admiration of all, and is held 
by some to be the greatest teacher of Absolute 
Truth the world has ever had. Besides attending 
,his public lectures, I joined one of his private 
classes, and so got behind the scenes and into the 
dressing-rooms of psychical theatricals. His stock 
in trade was a set of “Self-evident Propositions,” 
commonly called, “Axioms of Truth;” and each 
lesson was an ostentatiously hopeless attempt to 
present one of them so we would see and accept 
it. Each was quite true, in a way; but as used 
by him was a self-evident absurdity, and an 
Axiom of Falsehood. These beloved Axioms 
formed a perfect Metaphysical Statement of 
Being as different from Cosmic facts as darkness 
is from light, and beside which the old fashioned 
creed of orthodox Christian Science looks crude 
and materialistic. 

One of his axioms, or texts was, “What is is, 
and nothing else is.” It followed, according to 
the previously exploited Axiom of Unchangeable 
Being, that all that is always was and always will 
be, and nothing else ever was or ever will be. 
With a view to giving the brilliant argument a 
practical turn, someone asked if the devil really 
is or is not; and he ridiculed the question as stupid 
and irrevelant. We ought to rest in the perfect 
satisfaction of knowing that if the devil is he is, 
and if he isn’t he isn’t, and not mar the bliss by 
useless thought or care about which might happen 
to be the fact. Then he clinched his point by 



46 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


reminding us that if the devil is now he always 
was and always will be, by the law of Unchange¬ 
able Being; and also that if he is at all he is all 
there is, because All is One, and that One is All. 
Therefore if there is a Devil he must fill and com¬ 
pose the Universe from everlasting to everlasting, 
to the complete exclusion of God and everything 
else. By the same token, if there is a God, the 
same is true of him, and all other appearance is 
an illusion which the perception of Truth will 
wipe away. And I may add, by way of further 
illustration, that if the cock crowing on the dung¬ 
hill actually is at all he is all there is, ever was or 
ever can be, and every other appearance of Being 
is but an illusion which the perception of Truth 
will wipe away. 

In that class room I felt painfully out of place, 
because I seemed to be the only one who saw 
what a monstrous farce it all was—a farce rend¬ 
ered tragic by the fact that the Main Guy and all 
the little Guys were in solemn earnest about it. 
I walked home one evening with two bright 
young men, and listened to the serious talk with 
which they helped each other rearrange their per¬ 
ceptions in accordance with the new Cosmic 
Revelation. It involved the revolutionizing of 
all their thoughts and feelings, and they were 
bravely going through with it. Of course they 
needed revolutionizing; but this was a change 
from bad to worse. In plain words, they were 
faithfully and conscientiously assassinating what¬ 
ever native and acquired sense there was in their 
Mortal Minds, and deliberately going crazy right 
before my eyes; and the creeping horror of it 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 47 


chilled my soul. It was sad to realize that our 
teacher, standing at the summit of intellectual 
power, and in psychic touch with Infinite Wisdom 
and Knowledge, should, in the zeal of mental 
delusion and the pride of a mind breaking down 
in psychic riot, transmute the Truth of God into 
such bosh and humbug, and make it the business 
of his life to impregnate others with the germs of 
Ultimate Insanity. 

A month or two later I tackled the braying 
lion in his den, and for a very unpleasant hour and 
a half we sparred and thrust in a way to make 
Plato feel himself a back number. In the class 
he had quoted the varying exclamations people 
made at the first sight of Niagara Falls to illus¬ 
trate the fact that everything is in the mind, and 
the objective appearance nothing; and now I 
played him like a lawyer to draw a definite state¬ 
ment as to whether the apparent phenomena 
commonly referred to as the Falls actually had, 
or had not, an identity of its own, independent 
of any and all beholders. He steadily refused, 
with studied contempt for my hopeless ignorance, 
to commit himself to either side of that proposi¬ 
tion; and by that masterly inconclusiveness, 
which characterized the whole discussion, he 
maintained the fond delusion that he was saving 
his face. 

I knew he was going upon the unnatural 
strength of nervous and psychic conflagration, 
and soon afterward he dropped everything, and 
retired to the mountains for nearly a year. There 
a great psychological change came over him, and 
he returned to the platform a very different and 



48 STEPPING STONE STO HEAVEN. 


much better man—almost “born from above,” 
in fact, and fit for the kingdom of heaven. But 
it was easy to see that he had come back too soon. 
The transformation was not complete—the breath 
of life not established in his nostrils, and he was 
soon lost again in the poleless psychic maze of 
mystic Hespanola. 

The trouble with him, and with thousands more, 
his confederates and victims, is that they are 
striving after, and in a measure obtaining, divine 
illumination while still on the plane of the Mortal 
Mind, and subject to its functional inability to 
see clearly and think straight. Being incapable 
of Cosmic Conceptions, they are overwhelmed by 
the inflow of Cosmic Truth, and distort both it 
and themselves in hopeless efforts at harmonious 
adjustment. They cannot realize that there is 
room in the Universe for infinite variety. They 
cannot hold the thought that All Life is One 
without merging or discrediting the identity and 
individuality of its myriad manifestations. Their 
little brains cannot carry the conception of the 
Eternal Now without letting slip the equally vital 
and necessary conception of the Eternal Past and 
the Eternal Future. They are not large enough to 
accept the glories of Omniscience and Omnipres¬ 
ence without being false to the Fundamental 
Verities of Time and Space. Their little thought 
channel is damned by the Metaphysical bugaboo 
of Unchangeable Being, and their idea of Crea¬ 
tion fatally vitiated by the elemental dogma that 
anything that has a beginning must also have an 
ending. Indeed, their fundamental fault is that 
while others are lost by burrowing in the earth, 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 49 


they are lost by soaring away from it. The ma¬ 
terial universe and the five senses are the bul¬ 
warks of reason and conservators of sanity, and 
the mind that casts them off is like an engine 
without a governor or balance wheel, and runs 
wild in psychic riot. 

If I have here suggested and illustrated how 
the Mortal Mind works and deals with all prob¬ 
lems from the least even unto the greatest, I have 
also accounted for all the sin and evil and sorrow 
we have ever known. Mental ignorance, mental 
darkness, mental incapacity, mental bondage to 
elemental chaos, is the cause of all our trouble. 
And the remedy is to get Wisdom, get Knowledge, 
get Understanding, and cultivate all the faculties 
of perception, cogitation and co-ordination. The 
Material Universe is the Divine Kindergarten 
and training school of the Spirit, in which all 
must learn to know the Truth if they ever know it 
at all. The five senses are the true, God-ordained 
instruments by which the soul progresses from 
Mortal to Immortal Being. If your eye deceives 
you, you must train it to see truly, or be forever 
partially blind. If any or all of your mortal 
senses are liars your only hope of salvation is in 
teaching them to tell the truth, and keeping your 
mind open and alert to receive that truth, and 
work it into organic harmony with the Constitu¬ 
tion of the Universe. This is the Highway of 
Holiness—Wholeness—Complete Manifestation, 
in which the lopsided and inarticulate cannot 
walk. It is the Royal Way, the Divine Way, the 
Christ Way, of True Life; and whosoever tries to 
come up by any other way into the area of 



50 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


Eternal Health, Wealth, Light and Beauty is n 
thief of his own time and the robber of his owa 
soul. 

That is to say, the goal of all intellectual effort, 
the beginning of true Wisdom, the sure founda¬ 
tion of Knowledge on which to set up the King¬ 
dom that shall never be destroyed, is. Cosmic 
Consciousness. Without Cosmic Consciousness 
no man can consciously see God, or perceive the 
Truth of Being, or know for certain that he hath 
Eternal Life; and all his labor is vanity and vexa¬ 
tion of spirit. Cosmic Consciousness is the True 
Light that flashes around and dazzles every man 
that cometh into the mental world until he 
achieves the right focus and radiates it himself 
with dynamic power and splendor. It is not a 
new creation or addition from without, but the 
perfecting in glory of the same old mind that 
aforetime was mortal. It is not a gift of the Gods, 
but the achievement of your own soul. It does 
not come as the reward of merit or faith or any¬ 
thing else, but is the natural result of right living 
and sane thinking, and dates the blossoming of 
the Mortal into Immortality. Its appearance 
marks a programmed epoch in the soul's Eternal 
Progress just as putting forth the ear does in the 
growth of the corn. St. Paul was a vigorous 
animal, with a Mortal Mind of the strenuous type, 
and when he came into his own place in Cosmic 
Consciousness he was loyal to his bringing up, 
and wrought mightily. And in stating the case, 
as the chief apostle of Cosmic Evolution, he said, 
“First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn 
in the ear.” And verily I say unto you, the 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 51 


blade is the animal nature, the ear is tlfb Mortal 
Mind, and the full corn is Cosmic Consciousness. 
If you are well rooted in good ground and keep 
sane and sober, you will bring forth an hundred 
fold, and reap the fruit of all your labor. But if 
you fly the track and riot in the fruitless wastes 
of psychic delusion and metaphysical fornication 
with subjective environments, you will fiz out in 
shucks and smut. 

Cosmic Consciousness comes with the ripening 
and quickening of the mind, toward which all 
honest mental effort tends. It is Divine Illumi¬ 
nation. It is Full Salvation. It is— 

“The sense of Life that knows no death, 

The Love that maketh all things new.” 

An old Judian prophet had a foregleam of it 
when he said: 

“And there shall come forth a Rod out of the 
stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his 
roots, 

“And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, 
the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the 
Spirit of Counsel and Might, the Spirit of Knowl¬ 
edge and of the consciousness of the Lord; 

“And shall make him of quick Understanding 
in the consciousness of the Lord; and he shall not 
judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove 
after the hearing of his ears; 

“But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, 
and argue with equity for the meek of the earth; 
and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his 
mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he 
slay the wicked. 



52 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


“And righteousness shall be the girdle of his 
loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and 
the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the 
calf and the young lion together, and a little 
child shall lead them. 

“And the cow and the bear shall feed while their 
young ones lie down together; and the lion shall 
eat straw like the ox. 

“And the sucking child shall play by the hole of 
the asp, and the weaned child before the adder’s 
den. 

“They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy 
mountain; for the earth shall be full of the con¬ 
scious presence of the Lord, as the waters fill the sea. 

“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be 
glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and 
blossom as the rose. 

“It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice ever 
with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall 
be given unto it, and the excellency of Carmel and 
Sharon; they shall manifest the glory of the Lord, 
and the excellency of our God. 

“Strengthen ye the weak hands, and invigorate 
the feeble knees. 

“Say to them that are of fearful heart, Be 
strong, fear not; behold, your God will come with 
vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will 
come and save you. 

“Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and 
the ears of the deaf unstopped. 

“Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and 
the tongue of the dumb sing; for in the wilderness 
shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.” 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 53 


In this parable Jesse is the animal nature, the 
stem the Mortal Mind, and the Branch symbol¬ 
izes anyone who has achieved Cosmic Conscious¬ 
ness. Some think there was to be but one Illu¬ 
mined Soul, and that he appeared in the same 
country long afterward; but far away and only 
a little later than Isaiah, a great soul reached 
illumination, and— 


“Lo! the dawn 

Sprang with Buddah’s victory! Lo! in the East 
Flamed the first fires of beauteous day, poured 
forth 

Through fleeting folds of night’s black drapery. 
High in the widening blue the herald-star 
Faded to paler silver as there shot 
Brighter and brightest bars of rosy gleam 
Across the gray. Far off the shadowy hills 
Saw the great sun before the world was ware, 

And donned their crowns of crimson; flower by 
flower 

Felt the warm breath of morn and ’gan unfold 
Their tender lids. Over the spangled grass 
Swept the swift footsteps of the lovely light, 
Turning the tears of night to joyous gems, 
Decking the earth with radiance, ’bordering 
The sinking storm-clouds with a golden fringe, 
Gilding the feathers of the palms, which waved 
Glad salutation, darting beams of gold 
Into the glades; touching with magic wand 
The stream to rippled ruby. 

Yea! and so holy was the influence 
Of that high dawn which came with victory 



54 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


That far and near, in homes of men there spread 
An unknown peace. The slayer hid his knife; 
The robber laid his plunder back; the shroff 
Counted full tale of coins; all evil hearts 
Grew gentle, kind hearts grew gentler, as the balm 
Of that divinest daybreak lightened earth. 

Kings at fierce war called truce; the sick men 
leaped 

Laughing from beds of pain; the dying smiled 
As though they knew that happy morn was 
sprung 

From fountains further than the utmost East. 

So glad the world was—though it wist not why— 
That over desolate wastes went swooning songs 
Of mirth, the voice of bodiless prets and bhuts 
Foreseeing Buddha; and Devas in the air 
Cried, “It is finished, finished!” and the priests 
Stood with the wondering people in the streets 
Watching those golden splendors flood the sky, 
And saying, “There hath happed some mighty 
thing.” 

Also in Ran and Jungle grew that day 
Friendship among the creatures; spotted deer 
Browsed fearless where the tigress fed her cubs; 
And cheetahs lapped the pool beside the bucks; 
Under the eagle’s rock the brown hares scoured 
While his fierce beak but preened an idle wing; 
The snake sunned all his jewels in the beam 
With deadly fangs in sheath; the shrike let pass 
The nestling finch; the emerald halcyons 
Sat dreaming while the fishes played beneath, 
Nor hawked the merop, though the butterflies— 
Crimson and blue and amber—flitted thick 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 55 


Around his perch; the Spirit of our Lord 
Lay potent upon man and bird and beast, 
Glorified with the conquest gained for all.” 

Thus have poet-prophets foreshadowed by sign 
and symbol the dawning of the Kosman era—the 
Age of Risen Manhood—the wide-unfolding port¬ 
als of Brahamic Bliss and Splendor. 

“Oh, what a day is coming 
Swift o’er the hills of time; 

My soul to greet its glory 
Sets all her bells a-chime. 

And wide as ocean billows 
Shall flow the waves of peace. 

Till man to man is brother, 

And bitterness shall cease.” 

Be still, says the Omnipresent One, and know 
that I am God. Be quiet and listen to the inmost 
Voice. Hush the rudimentary drivel of the 
Mortal Mind and give it a chance to think while 
the wicked cease from babbling and the weary 
tongue finds rest. Verily I say unto you, there 
is more joy in heaven over one reformed chatter¬ 
box than over ninety and nine long winded 
preachers ordained to do the razzle-dazzle act on 
a long slumbering public. Oh, ye troubled 
victims of aeonian nightmare, will you never 
keep quiet long enough to wake up and take a 
tumble to yourselves? Many cheap Guys are 
rendering lip service to the Silence; but if you 
really achieve it once you may hear something 



56 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


infinitely worth while, and sweeter than any 
music ever heard on land or sea. 

“I hear it often in the dark, 

I hear it in the light,— 

Where is the Voice that comes to me 
With such a quiet might? 

It seems but echo to my thought, 

And yet beyond the stars; 

It seems a heart-beat in the hush, 

And yet the planet jars.” 

Yes, and no wonder the planet jars, for it is the 
Voice of Him who saith, “I come and the earth 
shall be shaken”; and not the earth only, but the 
heavens also, for— 

“It sounds along the ages, 

Soul answering unto soul; 

It kindles on the pages 
Of every bible scroll; 

The psalmists heard and sang it, 

From martyr lips it broke, 

And prophet tongues out-rang it, 

Till sleeping nations woke. 

From Sinai’s cliffs it echoed, 

It breathed from Buddha’s tree, 

It charmed in Athen’s market, 

And gladdened Galilee; 

The hammer stroke of Luther, 

The pilgrim’s sea-side prayer, 

The oracles of Concord, 

One Holy Word declare. 



STEPPING STONES T OHEAYEN. 57 


It dates each new ideal,— 

Itself it knows not time; 

Man’s laws but catch the music 
Of its eternal chime; 

It calls—and lo! hew Justice; 

It speaks—and lo! new Truth; 
In ever nobler stature, 

And unexhausted youth. 

It everywhere arriveth; 

Recks not of small and great; 
It shapes the unborn atom, 

And tells the sun its fate; 

The wing beat of arch-angel 
Its boundary never nears; 
Forever on it sourideth, 

The Music of the Spheres.” 




58 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


THE SEX QUESTION. 

Back of all fellowship is isolation, and before 
combination can begin separation must take 
place. The primeval, homogeneoxis Chaos, out 
of which the infinite variety and diversity that 
makes the Universe spicy and resplendent sprang, 
was formless, tasteless and colorless. It was in¬ 
finitely dull, flat and stupid, for even the ele¬ 
mentary differentiation into earth, water and air 
had not begun, and it was all one endless, topless, 
bottomless fog. The monotony wasn’t broken 
by even a sky-line or a jumping off place. It was 
a case of “water, water everywhere and not a drop 
to drink;” earth, earth everywhere and not a clod 
to stand on; air, air everywhere, and not a breath 
to breathe, and fire, fire everywhere, but not a 
thing to burn. And the whole Universe as we 
see it now—the earth and the fullness thereof, all 
that we prize as wealth, all that appeals to us as 
form and color and beauty, and we ourselves and 
the senses by which we take cognizance of self 
and its environment—is all the result of the segre¬ 
gation and isolation of the constituent parts, 
of the original Chaos into their proper spheres and 
places. And some people are clinging to that 
pre-elemental ideal of Oneness and Unity yet. 
They call that Undivided Potentiality God, and 
want to get back to God as he was before he took 
a tumble to himself, and began to be any good. 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 59 


And if they hold the thought strongly enough I 
expect they will get there. I fancy the up-to-date 
Gods have a mill in which to grind up such folks 
and cast their dust into outer darkness to thicken 
and fertilize the fog where a new world is wanted. 

And the starting point of Cosmic Architecture 
—the keel of the Universe—the great primordial 
Base Line that made Creation possible—was the 
line dividing the sexual potency of the insensiate 
Protoplasm. Before the mountains were con¬ 
ceived or ever the hills came forth the Divine 
Masculine and Divine Feminine blushed into 
conscious being, and commenced feeling for each 
other in the deep, dark void. And when they 
came together there was light, and the rosy dawn 
of a morning yet to be commingled with the soft, 
sweet twilight of an unborn noon to make the 
first day. 

From this basis, moved by the hope of the 
radiant joy inherent in differentiation and associa¬ 
tion, all things proceeded. As this beautiful 
Dawn Thought grew in strength and wisdom, the 
quickened fog and fire mist caught on to the 
scheme and subdivided itself into earth, water 
and air. The first dim vision of a possible 
Millennium came with the idea that social life and 
glory awaited the onward march of differentia¬ 
tion, segregation and individualization. I want 
you all to accept and shine up to, as the golden 
thought' of this discourse, the idea that the whole 
historic and pre-historic development of Life on 
this planet has been guided and dominated by the 
supreme desire of the Divine Masculine and 
Divine Feminine to separate themselves for social 




60 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


purposes into ever higher and finer and more 
susceptible and distinctive forms. And if you 
are still so out of tune with the Infinite as to 
harber any thought of evil or shame in connection 
with the specialized organs and functions of sex, 
let this illumination from on high cast that devil 
out of your Cosmos forever. If you are trying to 
build yourself up as an eternal Entity in Being 
on any other foundation than that of a well sexed 
animal, you are guilty of high treason against the 
constitution of the universe. If you are ashamed 
of your sex and its desires and functions, be sure 
that the All Father and All Mother are ashamed 
of you. If you do not know that sexual activity 
is to be respected everj^where as a gracious and 
holy thing, hit the nearest trail for tall timber, and 
learn wisdom from the beasts of the field and the 
fowls of the air. And if you turn away with soul 
offended from even the “silmy gendering of the 
toad,” you dishonor God, who once knew no 
higher creative formula, and still blesses it with 
his fruitful presence. 

Without this divine backing the distinctively 
sexual element could never have held its own and 
maintained a supremacy over the whole of life 
through ages of earnest and determined con¬ 
demnation and persecution. With all the ma¬ 
chinery of church and state and public opinion 
parked against it and backed by all the hopes of 
heaven and fears of hell, it has won out easily, 
and laughed the field to scorn; and that in spite 
of the fact that, under the leadership of the Mortal 
Mind, it has been its own worst enemy, and filled 
the world with every kind of crime and horror to 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 61 


rise up and testify against it. It is striking evi¬ 
dence of the deceitfulness of the Mortal Mind that 
while it has persistently denounced the sexual 
element and area as the chief seat of Satan, it has 
really been the chief key to human salvation— 
the one part of us which the Divine Nature has 
always been able to operate through in defiance 
of the Mortal Mind and all its legions of falsehood 
and delusion. In every age the three great safe 
guards against idiocy and insanity have been 
the serious, businesslike and insatiable demands 
of the back for clothing, the stomach for food, 
and the zone of propagation for the activity 
peculiar to itself; and against these elemental 
citadels of Divinity the gates of hell have never 
been able to prevail. 

All our trouble over the sex question began 
when the Mortal Mind arrived at self-conscious¬ 
ness and took over the functions of Divine In¬ 
stinct—making, among other inventions, the 
brilliant discovery that sexual delight could be 
made a perennial function, regardless of repro¬ 
ductive times and seasons. It was then that the 
titanic forces of selfishness, greed and lust began 
playing their part in human destiny, and a poet 
has given us a picture of the man of that early 
day— 

“Food he ate for pleasure, and wine he drank for 
gladness, 

And woman, ah, the woman! the crown of all 
delight! 

She was his—he knew it—he was strong to mad¬ 
ness, 

In that early dawning after prehistoric Night.” 



62 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


And the result we know only too well. The 
Mortal Mind is the great City of Refuge for all 
crude ideas, elemental conceptions, and vain 
delusions, where they intrench themselves for 
aeonian warfare against the Evolutionary forces 
of the Universe. And then, in reaction against 
the horrors of unnatural indulgence, the same 
mind, with characteristic blindness and effrontery, 
attacked the instinct it had perverted and de¬ 
bauched as the cause of the trouble. Then the 
instinct was compelled in self-defense to obsess 
the mind with that insanity known as lust, and 
this mutual perversion and distortion is what we 
have been up against ever since. Hell is war, 
which is the short term for discord in action, 
and what with the wars of the Flesh and the Spirit 
and the members one with another we have had 
hell to burn. From this has como our diseases, 
our crimes, our poverty, our eternal piddling 
along the slimy banks o. the river of death. 

Because man, as an individual, was divided 
within and against himself, he was divided from 
and against woman and his fellow man. Because 
different members of his body and mind hated and 
despised and fought each other, different tribes 
and nations and races hated and despised and 
fought likewise. Because the source of life was 
perverted and condemned it in turn perverted 
and condemned. Because the creative act was 
made a mockery, a play-thing and a crime, the 
resulting creature was a mock image of God, a 
play-thing of devils and an instinctive criminal. 
Well does the poet just quoted sum up the result: 




STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 63 


“Food he ate for pleasure—and it slew him with 
diseases; 

Wine he drank for gladness ; —and it led the way 
to crime; 

And the woman—he will hold her—he will have 
her when he pleases— 

And he never once has seen her since that pre¬ 
historic time.” 

Do you catch the tremendous meaning of that 
last line—why it is that man has never really seen 
woman, or she him, since they became creatures 
of lust? It doesn’t mean merely that their 
bodies are covered from each other’s sight—that 
is only symbolical of the real disappearance. 
When the creature of lust reached forth in brutal 
pride to take his heavenly kingdom by violence, 
it was but natural and inevitable that he should 
be cheated with a lie, ravish his lips with apples 
of Sodom, and in sottish delusion— 

“Embrace the body while the soul was far 
Beyond possession as the furtherest star.” 

^ And it was because her soul was not there, in 
the presence of the Abomination of Desolation, 
neither indeed could be, nor his either, that their 
children were conceived in sin and shapen in 
inequity and brought forth with the agonies of 
death to slink and grovel in the face of heaven. 
And it was the blind, instinctive recognition of 
loss, of absence, of having been beat in the game 
somehow, that filled the poisoned air with the 
spawn of suspicion and jealousy, and sowed the 



64 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


tares of hate in all Love’s fields of golden wheat, 
to make the bread of life most hard and bitter. 

We have heard of wonders in various lands and 
miracles in distant times, but the greatest wonder 
of the world and supreme miracle of the ages is 
the continuous and ever present resurrection of 
murdered Love. Here am I, a man; and yonder 
is a woman. For untold ages her kind and mine 
have driven each other to despair, insanity and 
crime, and done one another to death with every 
refinement of cruelty and excess of torture that 
hell could devise. Nowhere, in desert or jungle, 
or the trackless depths of the sea, can two crea¬ 
tures be found with half the cause to shrink with 
fear and horror from each other that we have. 
And yet we are delighted to meet; the glad hands 
linger for their Own fond concourse, and sweetly 
smiling lips make gentle words melodious. With 
the full consciousness that we stand upon the 
brink of that fiery hell into which countless gen¬ 
erations of our ancestors have relentlessly hurled 
each other, we freely and fearlessly and proudly 
fraternize, embrace and love. And if any dull- 
brained disciple of Reason and Logic inquires 
why is this thusness, we can only smile, and say, 
“This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in 
our eyes also.” Our faith in each other is per¬ 
fect; we believe without question and trust with¬ 
out limit; and yet, by all the lessons of experi¬ 
ence and rules of logic, it ought to be more impos¬ 
sible for us to do that than for the most hard 
headed infidel in seven states to swallow the 
wildest theological romance a whole flock of 
priests could elaborate. 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 65 


But, Dearie, it isn’t our faith that saves us, 
but the infinite hope that springs undaunted in 
the Eternal Breast—the boundless faith of God 
in every human promise. Those golden hours of 
untried love are rich and radiant because our 
souls are there, reveling in the fleeting foregleam 
of a Millennial morn, and divinely reckless of the 
fact that, smirking in the shadow of yonder 
chancel rail, the sanctimonious beadle of the 
night that knows no day is waiting to unleash the 
dragon that swallows the sun and lead us groping 
and blind, to the fatal brink, where we are pro¬ 
grammed by the Mortal Mind to re-enact the 
stereotyped tragedy that spells all the difference 
between heaven and hell. And there, under the 
pale, bent gleam of the dying honeymoon, the 
Spirit of the Bride and the Spirit of the Bride¬ 
groom, baptised anew with the tears of Gethse- 
mane and the blood of Calvary, turn back, saying: 
“Behold your bodies are left unto you vile and 
desolate, and henceforth you shall not see our 
glory until you are ready to turn and say, Blessed 
are they who come in the name of the Lord.” 

And, oh, Beloved! why not say it now? What's 
the use of keeping the eternal lock-step to the 
dead march round and round the gooseberry 
bush? The pattern shown to us in the magic 
glamor of these anti-nuptial days is the Celestial 
Sarcognomy that revealeth all things. ’Tis 
then we catch one foregleam of the Brahamic 
Bliss and Splendor! ’Tis then the curtain is 
lifted a little to show us the brightness and glory 
of life! 'Tis then we crown him Lord of all, for 



66 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


we see him as he is in the power and majesty of a 
son of God!— 

“ ‘Tis then we glimpse a moment in her face 
The glory she will give the future race; 

The strong, heroic spirit, knit beyond 
All induration of the diamond!” 

‘Tis then we ’just begin to comprehend that 
Transcendent Life, the reflected splendor of 
which made prophetic poets dream of pearly 
gates and golden streets and sapphire thrones! 
And, Tis then, upon the very Mount of Trans¬ 
figuration, that we turn from all the gleaming 
glory of the Promised Land and go down some 
other way to squander in purposeless debauchery, 
the divine inheritance which even the “slimy 
toad” faithfully conserves for divine service. 
Oh, what countless millions of strong, brave, 
beautiful youths and maidens have gone up to 
possess Immanuel's Land, and sold themselves 
in slavery to the abominations of the Canaanites! 
And here we stand, in the opening years of the 
twentieth century, under the pure, white light of 
heaven, with the stain and burden of that dis¬ 
cordant heredity ingrained in every convolution 
of the brain, every instinct of the heart and every 
fiber of the body, whiie the whole creation groan- 
eth and travaileth with an unborn race until we 
are ready to retune ourselves in unison with 
Evolutionary Harmonics, and stand forth as 
living Words of God to transmute into Cosmic 
Splendor the dreary Chaos tnat the Mortal Mind 
has made. 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 67 


And this transmutation must begin at home, 
in the inmost being of you, my brother, and you, 
my sister. You must first be reconciled to your¬ 
self—your whole, Cosmic Self. You must accept 
your entire personality, body, mind and spirit, 
as one complete, harmonious Entity in Being. 
You must learn to lift yourself up fearlessly and 
carry yourself well as a royal son or daughter of 
Jehovah without ceasing to be proud and happy 
in the glowing consciousness that you are a well 
sexed animal. You must command peace and 
fraternity and loving co-operation within your 
personal kingdom until no member or feeling or 
function will say to another, “I have no need of 
thee.” And if there is any segment of your 
masculine or feminine hemisphere that you 
shrink from receiving into full fellowship and 
complete equality, shine up to it with all the 
dynamic glory of your illumined soul until it 
looks as good to you as it did to God when he 
awoke with the first Millennium Vision in his 
eyes and went forth on that historic Higeria 
over the face of the deep. 

And when you have brought forth all your 
members into fraternal delight and glory, put 
them in their proper places, and keep them there 
in free and glad subjection to the supreme Federal 
Will, which will no£ allow anyone to dominate or 
overshadow another. This Celestial Renais¬ 
sance requires Concentration—not the moon¬ 
struck concentration on a door-knob or an ab¬ 
stract idea, but the true Concentration, which is 
Centralization—the divinely self-centered and 
self-poised state in which you can turn instantly 



68 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


in any direction and to any work or subject with¬ 
out being at all disturbed or inconvenienced. 
This is the ideal state of full salvation—the utter¬ 
most sanctification and consecration of every 
part to the service of the Whole—the real At— 
one—ment of your Infinite Self. 

Nowadays most people have themselves fairly 
well under control, with the exception of two 
stubborn and rebellious areas, commonly known 
as the vocal and sexual organs. The tongue 
used to have the reputation of being an unrully 
member that no man could tame; but we are 
learning to have dominion over it at last, and 
make it wag how and when we please, and keep 
still the rest of the time. It is up to us now to 
extend the area of federal control, with its mantle 
of peace, poise and sanity, over the sexual region 
also; and then we may present ourselves before 
the Universe as perfect and entire, wanting 
nothing, and fully equipped for every good work. 

Of course this concentration and federalization 
of yourself into an organic Entity in Being in¬ 
volves the dissipation of some provencial power 
and authority which formed centers of discord. 
Some of your members will feel imposed upon 
because they can no longer impose on others. 
The propagative zone will be apt to insist most 
strongly on its vested privileges, and have to be 
shown very firmly that its ingrained propensity 
for butting in is an impertinence that will be no 
longer tolerated. You must train that province 
of your kingdom to the innate consciousness that 
it is there not to be ministered unto, but to min¬ 
ister; not command, but obey; not lead, but 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 69 


follow, and that it is expected to get busy when 
it receives an official call from above to serve the 
Cosmic Cause, and keep small and quiet on all 
other occasions. 

And you cannot get the idea too firmly fixed 
in your own innate consciousness that in thus 
making the area of poise and sanity co-extensive 
with your being you are not fighting against 
Nature, but merely correcting the mistakes of 
the Mortal Mind for the purpose of getting back 
to Nature. The prevailing sexual insanity to 
which we are bred and born is about the most 
unnatural and disproportionate thing in the world. 
While a perverted and misdirected sexuality is 
allowed to ravage the social realm as a pirate, a 
brigand and a bully, any truly fair and gracious 
society is impossible. Only as that insurgent 
element of our divine nature is brought into sub¬ 
jection, civilized, enfranchised and gracefully 
assimilated, can we estimate it for what it is really 
worth; but we may be sure it will be worth vastly 
more as a faithful servant than it has ever been 
as a faithless master. We can as yet hardly con¬ 
ceive of the measureless increase of the richness 
and freedom and beauty of social life when the 
specialized sexual function is definitely and gen¬ 
erally set aside as a permissable but non-essen¬ 
tial beatitude, and need no longer be watched 
and guarded against as a subtle and dangerous 
introducer of undesirable complications. No 
matter how fine a front you pump up you can 
never be wholly fair and honest and true to either 
yourself or your friends while obliged to meet and 
deal with midnight or midday prowlers whose 



70 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


chief motive for social locomotion is a desire to 
buy, beg or steal a stall in the spawn market. 

And in this bright and beautiful future we shall 
need all the sexual power and passion we have 
generated in the dark and troubled past for trans¬ 
fusion and readjustment. Indeed, we never had 
too much of that sacred potency, if we had known 
how to use it. Things always went wrong along 
that line because the stupid Mortal Mind was 
trying to express and satisfy the creative energy 
of a God through the form and functions of an 
animal. With that divine power properly dif¬ 
fused through the whole being, and taken up as* 
an infinitely precious possession by every faculty 
of the mind and soul, there would be none too 
much left in the zone of fertilization for legitimate 
social and propagative purposes. 

One of the most beautiful characters I ever 
met—almost Cosmic in his breadth and depth— 
was an Artist—a painter by instinct and training, 
and a trainer of others in their artistic instincts. 
He was also a student of Sociology, and an apostle 
of industrial sanity among the workers of the 
world. As Secretary of the Central Labor 
Union in a large city, he was in all the clash and 
turmoil of the industrial hell, with the ignorance 
and greed and brutality of all classes beating upon 
him. When I met him he had still further 
broadened his labor of love, and was leading a 
state campaign as the Socialist candidate for 
governor. 

But whether painting in his studio, fighting 
for justice to the oppressed, harmonizing the 
stupid quarrels and jealousies of his constituents, 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 71 


or preaching the gospel of brotherhood and com¬ 
mon sense in smokey halls and on noisy street 
corners, he was first and always a Man—a grand, 
sweet, beautiful Man—an incarnate Evangel of 
Life resplendent and serene. We began talking 
of industrial problems, but as he found I knew 
much more than that, he gladly went on to rarer 
converse; and in the fine communion of kindred 
souls I learned somewhat of his story. 

He and his Affinity had grown up as boy and 
girl together, their love developing serenely as 
themselves, and there had never been a time 
when they began to be lovers or ceased to be 
friends. She was a painter also, and they studied, 
worked and taught together; the teaching being 
a labor of love, without price, to all who felt their 
need for such ministry. Finally, they conformed 
to custom by legally marrying, although neither 
cared at all for ceremonial observances, and the 
formality brought no change into their lives. 
Satisfied with their love, devoted to their creative 
work, and giving themselves freely as a ransom 
for all, they turned not aside for the things of the 
flesh. Three years after the formal marriage 
the beloved sister and sweetheart passed over to 
the unseen realm; and he who was left returned 
the virgin body to the ground, and went on with 
the work alone. 

It was years afterward that I met him, so grand 
and gentle, measuring eternity by the good ac¬ 
complished in the busy days. His soul was 
always lonely, and the heartache never ceased; 
but his royal blood felt no vibration of another 
love. He knew that She was waiting for him in 



72 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


some other realm, and his honor could not be less 
than above suspicion and beyond reproach. It 
was not for him to question why, or choose, if he 
would do or die. He could only meet with grace 
and power the need of every passing day, and 
leave the times and seasons of the glory yet to be 
in the keeping of the Infinite Wisdom enthroned 
beyond the stars. 

Probably he was mistaken about some things. 
Perhaps the chords of living love should not have 
been so long sustained across the gulf of death. 
Perchance it was not best to ignore the flesh en¬ 
tirely. Possibly if her life had been rounded out 
with motherhood, or, at least, enriched by honest 
effort thereunto, she would not have passed 
away. You have heard that it was said by one 
of old time, combating as best he might the obvi¬ 
ous evil of unseemly lust, that he who kept his 
Virgin unfertilized was doing better than he who 
chanced the sowing of an unknown harvest; but 
I say unto you, if you are able to receive it, and 
worthy to unseal the Book of Life, give your loins 
a taste of the strenuous life occasionally, that 
hers may live also, and make their proper con¬ 
tribution to her crown of beauty. But, what¬ 
ever we may think of that, my friend was a 
glorious man. To be able to live such a life and 
meet such a test, and carry such a sublime ideal 
with a strength and grace that knew no flaw, is 
to win a title clear to the love and reverence of 
every heart that has ever felt a noble aspiration. 

And when the whole being is properly under 
the control of the truly self-centered Federal 
Will and Intelligence, it should be easy for any of 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 73 


us to do likewise, if there is any good reason for 
it—and the establishment of a counterpoise to 
hereditary lopsidedness is a pretty good reason. 
In this, as in other familiar cases, those who 
boast of their ability to “take it or leave it alone” 
are much too prone to demonstrate the part of 
the proposition that has already been proved to 
death; and while I cannot advise total abstinence 
as a principle, I heartily recommend it as splendid 
exercise. Until men and women are ready and 
able to stand before each other naked and un¬ 
ashamed, and also unoffended, unshocked and un¬ 
tempted, they are not fully fit to stand before 
each other at all. Nay, more, oh my most noble 
brother and resplendent sister, you should be 
able to lie in each other’s arms with infinite con¬ 
tentment and delight, and let your warm hearts 
beat against one another through the fine, sweet 
hours while soul communes with soul in fondness 
undisturbed by any local erudiscence of the inter¬ 
locking system. And on the rare and radiant 
occasions when the flesh does have its innings, 
every faculty of mind and spirit should turn that 
way with proud and loving confluence, and crown 
earth’s greatest luxury with Celestial Bliss and 
Splendor. 

And those to whom the signs of the times are 
an open vision know that this normal and natural 
glory is a vital and impending fact, intermingling 
the present with the immediate future. The 
work of Individual and Social Emancipation, 
Revelation and Restoration is prospering every¬ 
where under the fostering care and guidance of 
the Spirit of Truth—The Returning Christ. The 



74 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


things which the frightened devotees of the pass¬ 
ing age of darkness and sorrow view with alarm 
are those to which we point with pride as the 
heralds of the Millinneal Dawn. The association 
of men and women on equal terms in business 
and politics, the growing ease and freedom of 
inter-sexual society, the passing of the chaperon, 
the general emanicipation from espionage and 
suspicion, the beautifully diminishing list of 
actions and situations which even Madam Grundy 
regards as scandalous, all mark the beginning of 
the end of the Old Order. The great sea-side 
resorts, where that stupid, clinging, clamy relic 
of barbarism, the bathing suit, is steadily shrink¬ 
ing to the vanishing point, are valuable schools 
of vital divinity. Indeed, the Illuminatti always 
regarded the bathing suit as a sort of Missouri 
Compromise for the sake of people who had to be 
shown seriatim. And every lady who wears a 
dress beginning to slip down over her shoulders 
and trail along the ground is a living prophecy 
of the time when the risen daughter of God will 
step clear out of her embroidered shroudery, and 
stand forth, clothed with the sun of righteousness, 
purity and self-possession. 

Coming over from Oakland on one of the big 
San Francisco ferry hoats, I noticed what a fine 
lot of splendid New American Women there were 
on board; and upon entering the slip, against a 
strong west wind, we had an interesting and 
instructive situation; for as the passengers swept 
down the broad open stairway from the upper 
deck the sportive sea breeze swept up, and played 
parachute with all the flowing skirts. While 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 75 


some of the other fellows kept their peepers busy 
elsewhere looking for what they considered the 
real thing, I studied the faces of the girls, and 
listened to the telltale tones of their little laughs 
and exclamations, with eye and ear attuned for 
copy; and I enjoyed the impromptu undress re- 
hersal as much as anyone, not for the reasons that 
would naturally occur to a gutter-snipe, but be¬ 
cause I was sensible enough to see, and sensitive 
enough to feel, that the spirits of the ladies rose 
in unison with their skirts, and that, back of a 
slight appearance of confusion, they really en¬ 
joyed making the involuntary protest against 
an impertinently persistent conventionality of 
the dead ages. Those of you who think that 
spiritual and mental elation in such a case was 
not consistent with true ladyhood are dead to 
the things pertaining to Life, and your burial is 
incidental to the extension of the area of free¬ 
dom for the sons and daughters of God. If any 
real lady there felt genuine shame, it was not 
because her skirts were fluttering around her 
shoulders, but because so many of her fellow 
passengers were probably supernumerary links 
between the brute-man and the gentle-man; and 
the omnipresence of such cases of belated develop¬ 
ment is an affliction we all have to reckon with 
and suffer from. In those delicate transforma¬ 
tion days the miserable refugee from Rubber 
Neck, Mo. who doesn’t know the difference be¬ 
tween wanton exposure and divine revelation, 
is de trop everywhere, and should be promptly 
billed out for Ausgespielt on No. 11. 

It is the same divine transforming and renew- 



76 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


ing Millennial Spirit that is knocking the matri¬ 
monial market silly. The decrease of marriages 
and increase of divorces are potent signs of the 
Changing Order, and indicate the healthy growth 
of sound ideas of freedom and independence. 
Whatever unwise celebacy we have on hand must 
be gracefully accepted as a temporary protest 
against the other extremes; and, without blinding 
ourselves to its serious and tragic features, we 
must rejoice over the decisive fact that the best 
Motherhood has gone on an instinctive strike to 
enforce the divine demand for better conditions 
generally, and a better Fatherhood in particular. 
It marks the antithesis of the old condition, 
which moved the poet to exclaim: 

“Oh, wasteful Woman, she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay, 

How has she cheapened Paradise! 

How given for naught the priceless gift, 

How spoilt the bread and spilt the wine 
Which spent with due, respective thrift, 

Had made brutes human, and men divine.” 

Truly in these last days the Spirit of the Lord 
is moving beneath the surface of things, and we 
must get busy and create a New Earth and a 
New Heaven and a New Manhood before we ask 
that transcendent New Creature, the New 
Woman, to be fruitful and multiply and replenish 
the earth with God’s Millennial Legions. 

The great Ideal of a happy, life-long partner¬ 
ship, and the wealth and beauty of a permanent 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 77 


home, was, and is, very good; but the attempt 
to realize it by civil and ecclesiastical machinery 
is part of the crude blundering of that incorrigible 
amateur, the Mortal Mind, with its porcine pro¬ 
clivity for facing one way and going another. 
Always in the past, and to a great extent to-day, 
the married woman is the real bond woman, and 
her children hereditary slaves, born of lust and 
outrage. All our ideals on that subject have 
been slave ideals, and the whole program of 
civilization arranged to honor and cultivate 
baseness, and degrade and exterminate nobility. 
The true Divine Womanhood and Motherhood, 
as we begin to see it now, has been produced by 
the divine power and purpose of Cosmic Evolu¬ 
tion in spite of the most strenuous and well meant 
efforts of that fool friend, the Mortal Mind, to 
render aeonian gestation abortive and the process 
of development impossible. Not until Love has 
learned and dared to laugh at jawsmiths as well 
as locksmiths, and snap its fingers and other 
paraphernalia at the parchment-mongers, will 
we have any adequate Millennial presentation of 
the Divine Feminine in the person of the Free 
Woman, and her high-born children of Immacu¬ 
late Conception. 

But, Dearly Beloved, we shall not always 
sleep, nor vegetate as thorn and gum trees walk¬ 
ing in a misty dreamland. When we have been 
thus transformed by the renewing of our minds, 
and our souls have stood upright within us and 
come, each to its own peculiar place of power 
and majesty as. a right hand of God, we shall 
laugh softly at the embryonic folly of the muling 



78 STEPPING STONE STO HEAVEN. 


period, and go forth as risen sons and daughters 
of God to establish the kingdom that shall never 
be destroyed, extend Jerusalem’s Holy Mountain 
until it fills the whole earth, and maintain— 

“O’er a trembling, troubled world 
The banner of God’s love unfurled.” 

It is not “Lo, here,” or “Lo, there,” but every¬ 
where, that the Light that never shone on land 
or sea is rising into world power, and the creeping, 
shadowy things of darkness are sitting up to take 
notice that there is something new and glorious 
in the sun. 

“From Greenland’s icy mountains, 

From India’s coral strand; 

Where Afric’s sunny fountains 
Roll down their golden sand.” 

And from gay, be-ribboned Paris to the courts 
of Mandelay, awakened souls are crying out, 
“Watchman, what of the night?” And ever the 
answer comes back, in all the tones and languages 
the bewildered earth has known:— 

‘Through the harsh noises of our day 

A low, sweet prelude finds its way; 

Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear 

A light is breaking, calm and clear. 

That song of Love, now low and far, 

Ere long shall swell from star to star; 

That Light, the breaking day which tips 

The golden-spired Apocalypse.” 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 79 


I spoke just now of the wonderous resurrection 
of abused and murdered Love, and the same is 
true of Life, with all its electric and d}mamic 
powers and functions. Weeping may endure 
for a season, but joy cometh in the morning. 
Ignorance may roll its billows of sin and horror 
over and through us, but from it all we rise re¬ 
splendent to meet the Sun of Righteousness with 
its winged physicians. Hell may have dragged 
us in and taught us to wallow with the demons 
in its depths, but when the days of our separa¬ 
tion and cleansing are accomplished, all that 
superficial abomination rolls away from body, 
mind and soul, like the baseless fabric of a dream, 
and at the threshold of that Wonderland which 
is to be our eternal home we realize that peren¬ 
nial health and strength and beauty is to be our 
portion forevermore. 

And O! my darling Chum and Sister and Sweet¬ 
heart, I begin at last to see thee as thou art, the 
Holy One of God. Throughout the ages, in joy 
and sorrow, thou hast been ever with me, but I 
knew thee not, for my heart was consumed with 
lust, and my eyes holden by greed. But in all 
the generations of darkness and dementa we have 
been faithful to each other according to the light 
we had, and now our reward is with us, even our 
own souls, refined and purified in aeonian fire. 
Nothing can ever separate us again, for we have 
seen through all the delusions and skulldruggery 
of the Mortal Mind, and— 

“One thing stands clear in the heart’s sweet 
reason, 



80 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


One light o’er the chasm runs— 

To turn from Love is the world’s one treason 
That treads down all the suns.” 

And looking back over the way we have come, 
we can read, with perhaps a deeper meaning than 
ever the poet-prophet knew, the inspired lines: 

“O’er the mount and through the moor 
Glide the Lover’s steps secure; 

Day and night no fear he knows, 

Lonely, but with God, he goes. 

For the coat of mail bedight 
In his spotless robe of white; 

For the sinful sword his hand 
Bearing high the olive wand. 

Through the camp and through the court, 
Through the dark and deadly fort, 

On the mission of the dove 
Speeds the Minister of Love. 

By his word the wildest tames, 

And the World to God reclaims; 

War and wrath and famine cease, 

Hushed around his path of peace.” 

Yes, Dearie, the Minister of Love was ever with 
us, and it has all been infinitely worth while; for 
here, at the end of the Cimmerian Way, we tread 
the broad, brown path across the sun-kissed, 
flower-strewn fields of Beulah Land, where Dante 
and Beatrice walked beyond the reach of all 
Inferno’s crude vibrations. Before us the Olym- 



STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 81 


pian mountains rise, crowned with heaven’s 
auroral splendor — 

“And we look with eyes that know no tears 
Back through the curtain of gathered years; 
And hear again the same old tunes 
That made Decembers eternal Junes.” 

But stay, Beloved! That struggling world is 
ours! Those wandering feet and tear-dimmed 
eyes and broken, burning hearts are kindred to 
our ow r n; and we must not leave them desolate 
now that we have achieved the right and power 
to come in the name of the Lord and set the 
prisoners free. 

“Have you had salvation shown? 

Pass it on, pass it on. 

‘Tis not given for you alone, 

Pass it on, pass it on. 

Let it sound in all their ears, 

Let it dry each fount of tears, 

Till as heaven the earth' appears! 

Pass it on, pass it on!” 

Those who have been saved by that sword 
which is the Word of Truth, even the sharp, 
two-edged sword proceeding out of the mouth 
of God, must themselves take that sword in be¬ 
half of others, baptise their lips with its flaming, 
piercing power, and — 

“Strike till the last dark foe expires, 

Strike till the hand of Death retires, 



82 STEPPING STONES TO HEAVEN. 


Strike for the right of high desires,— 

God and this dear old world!” 

And in Jehovah’s name make the issue clear 
and the warfare short, for the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand, and— 

“this sword must first 

The darkling prison house of mankind burst, 

E’re Peace can visit us, or Truth let in 
Her waking daylight on a world of sin! 

But then, Celestial warriors, then, when all 
Earth’s shrines and thrones before our banners 
fall; 

When the glad slave shall at our feet lay down 
His broken chain—the tyrant lord his crown, 
The priest his book—the conqueror his wreath, 
And from the lips of Truth one mighty breath 
Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze 
That whole damn pile of human mockeries;— 
Then shall the reign of Mind commence on earth, 
And, starting fresh, as from a second birth, 

Man, in the sunshine of the world’s new spring, 
Shall walk transparent like some holy thing!” 




































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